Fanfic Is Crapsack

Chapters

Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Chapter 9

Chapter 2

Cheerilee trotted down the dimly lit back alley, hastening her steps as the night grew darker around her. Had she been in a more observant state of mind she might have pondered what a gritty, big city back alley was doing in a country town made of picturesque thatched cottages. But she had worked late at the schoolhouse and was in a hurry to get back home, and not of a mind to ponder the nature of the quick shortcut she was taking.

Something scuttled in the shadows above her. Over the schoolteacher's unsuspecting head a hideous, segmented form clung to the walls, lurking in the eaves, slowly stalking her. This thing was no native of Ponyville, Equestria, or any hypothetical galaxy the pony's world floated in.

It's segmented tail writhed as it skittered, seemingly immune to gravity, over the concrete walls, it's blind elongated head tracking the maroon pony's every move. Claws flexed and inner and outer jaws drooled; fresh, fresh meat in which to lay its eggs.... carefully it climbed, headfirst, down a nearby telephone pole, closer and closer to where Cheerilee stood in the mouth of the alley, bemused by her loss of direction. Another few feet and it would be in range to spring.

Plop, Plop. Fizz. Fizz.

"Scuse me..."

the xenophage whipped its head around. There on the other side of the telephone pole, hanging by a lumberjack's belt and climbing pitons and grinning in a manner that made the space predator suddenly regret all the decisions that had brought it to this point in life, was a bright pink pony. The native was holding an empty box labeled "Appaloosa Seltzer" in one hoof, and a large 2 liter bottle of liquid which was beginning to fizz quite violently in the other.

"Here ya go!" Just as the acid-blooded alien hissed in surprise, the pony lunged forward and jammed the spout of the foaming bottle between its gaping jaws. Bubbling, foaming, alkaline liquid gushed down the shocked predator's unearthly throat.

A great deal of rather exciting chemistry proceeded to happen.

Cheerilee was looking in either direction, confused, trying to figure out how she was so turned around in her own neighborhood, when she noticed a strange rumbling, hissing noise coming from the alley behind her. Alarmed, she ducked around the corner out of the way. Just as she peeked back around the corner, there was a loud, sort of wet sound that could only be spelled out as

"BOWOUMPFSH"

And a blast of brackish green foam erupted from the alleyway. It barely missed Cheerilee's head and spattered against the housefront across the street, garnishing it with icicles of unwholesome looking goo. A moment later, Pinkie Pie came out after, sliding out of the alleyway on her back on a river of frothy slime and covered head to hoof in foaming ichor. "Wow," she exclaimed, "that was even more fun than I expected. Hi Cheerilee!"

Cheerilee stared at the town's number one party pony. "Pinkie.... what....?"

"--nothing to worry about," Pinkie said, waving one dripping hoof at the foamy devastation all around her. "Just a little cleanup thingie. You don't need to worry about it; just go on home and put your hoofsies up till tomorrow." She got to her feet, her mane and tail trailing limply in the slime. "Oh, and if you see Sweepie the street cleaner, tell him to be sure and sprinkle lots and lots of baking soda around here just in case.' No need to go into details. kay?" She beamed at the befuddled teacher.

Cheerilee thought about it. This was just Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie...Though her trademark cheery grin seemed a tad... twitchy. Cheerilee struggled mentally for a bit and gave up. "I suppose not," she sighed. "I doubt I could even begin to explain what just happened anyway."

"Exactly!" Pinkamena agreed. "Go on home, it'll all be better tomorrow. Later..." She staggered off into the night, dribbling slimy foam behind her.

"Yes, I'm afraid there's no hope. You're never going to fly again." The pony in the white lab coat looked over his chart somberly. "The crippling is permanent."

"NOOOOOOOO !" the bandaged pegasus lying in the hospital bed exclaimed, clutching at her rainbow mane. "All my life's ambitions gone forever...."

The purple unicorn standing next to the doctor looked far less impressed. "Isn't that a little extreme for a bruised wing joint and a papercut?" Twilight asked. She had gone back to the library to see if she couldn't find some weight loss spellbooks for Lyra when Rainbow Dash had her minor accident. Twilight had rerouted to the hospital in order to retrieve some ingredients for a special unicorn weight-loss shake, and The rainbow pegasus had come along with her to get some liniment for her bruised shoulder and a bandage for her knee.

The doctor looked at her and huffed through his mustache, offended. "Bruised wingjoint? My dear miss Twilight, this is no such thing! It's a clear cut case of Deus Ex Machina with compound Dramatis Personae, an incurable condition among pegasi! Yes, I'm afraid she'll be lucky to even get around in a wheelchair from now on..."

Twilight stared at him. "She tripped and fell down the front steps of the library! She's slammed into trees at a hundred miles an hour and flown away with less injury. Heck, she flew here from the library with me!"

"Well I'm afraid the diagnosis is still the same," the doctor scowled. "The test results are conclusive. I am sorry miss," he said sincerely to Rainbow Dash, who was now weeping hysterically into her hospital sheets. "Oh, and I'm afraid there's more bad news..."

"What??" Rainbow Dash said.

"Yes, I'm afraid our tests also indicate that you're pregnant."

"WHAT??"

"With Fluttershy's baby."

".... wait... WHAT???"

"Unfortunately you won't be able to carry to term as you're also apparently dying of cancer, leprosy, hoof and mouth and at least four venereal diseases normally only associated with lesbian Gryphons---"

Dash's final shriek of unbelieving horror set dogs howling on the far side of town.

Rarity, being Rarity, swooned. "Oh, the tragedy of it all!" she lamented in full blown drama queen mode. Her fainting couch appeared from nowhere; befitting her current "empaupered" state it was chipped, raggedy and covered in patches. She flung herself across it, heedless of the broken springs. "Poor Rainbow Dash, cut down in her prime! Poor Fluttershy, to lose her secret love---"

"THERE IS NO SECRET LOVE!" Rainbow Dash shrieked in outrage and dismay.

"No, not any more!" Rarity said without missing a beat. "-- and to lose the foal of their passionate (ouch, these wretched springs) affair...."

"Oh that is enough of this!" Twilight snapped. she snatched the doctor's clipboard from him. "Give me that!" Muttering angrily to herself she began flipping through the sheets. Her growling diminished as she read. She read on silently for several minutes while Rarity, the doctor, and an incredibly traumatized Rainbow Dash watched her. When she finished she flipped back to the first page and looked up. "Doctor?"

"Yes?"

"Would you care to explain this bit for the rest of us?" She levitated the clipboard so all of them could see. Right on top was an X-ray of what was clearly a potted plant, along with a single sheet of paper with the words

BINGO

BANGO

BONGO

BOINGO

Printed on it.

Everyone fell silent. There was a shift, almost a ripple in the air. The doctor's eyes glazed. "Well... that is to say, um..."

"It says nothing!" Twilight yelled, her veneer of patience vanishing like morning mist under the desert sun. "It's gibberish, it's all gobbledigook like this for pages and pages! The blood tests look like you mixed tomato juice and yoo-hoo in a test tube and then made a wish! The charts mean nothing, they're just random scribbles--- I think some of them were done in crayon! What in Equestria are you trying to pull??"

The hapless doctor looked as if he'd been poleaxed. His pupils were dilated to pinpricks and he seemed to have trouble breathing. "You... you don't understand... it's important to learn to cope, because, uh... tragedy... makes you all deep and stuff...." he babbled.

Twilight had heard enough. She belted the doctor upside the head with his own clipboard; he hit the squeaky-clean tile floors like a sack of dirt, out like a light. "You quack!" she yelled down at the unconscious doctor. She rounded on the nurse who came galloping in at the noise. "I'm filing a medical malpractice report with the Princesses on this jackass, this hospital and everyone who works in it! And you'd better keep this clown in particular away from any patients, because if I find out he's treated anyone else between now and then I'm coming back with the royal guard! Come on, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, we are out of this Quack farm!"

"Does this mean I'm not gonna die...?" the distraught pegasus quavered, eyes glimmering with a tiny spark of hope.

Twilight rolled her eyes in spite of herself. "No-- at least as long as you stay away from this lunatic. And no, you're not crippled, infested with gryphon diseases or carrying Fluttershy's love child either. Come on." The purple pony turned on her heel and marched out. Rarity and Rainbow Dash, still clutching her hospital pillow like a comfort doll, followed. Stepping over the doctor, who had regained consciousness and was now leafing through his clipboard, clutching his head and muttering in bafflement.

Chapter 3

It was a beautiful morning in Canterlot. The birds were singing, the castle staff were bustling about their duties with a good cheer, and the sun was shining brightly. Which was a tad unusual, as Celestia was still sound asleep. Those that were in a position to notice the discrepancy simply shrugged it off; it would not be the first time that Celestia had woken up just long enough to nudge the Sun above the horizon and then fall right back asleep. It was probably the oldest running joke in Equestria that the Princess of the Sun was, ironically, NOT a morning pony.

Celestia grumbled and stirred as the first morning's rays finally made their way through the mountain of pillows and sheets to her eyes. With considerable effort she swam her way up through the layers till her tousled head poked up into the open air. She regarded her regal chambers with bleary eyes..... "bleagh," seemed to sum up her feelings on the matter.

She blinked, rubbing her eyes with one free hoof. Something was not quite right. No, not the Sun--- it wasn't the first time she'd raised it and then crashed again; didn't look to be more than an hour past sunrise, thank goodness she hadn't overslept long, then.... no, something else. Maybe several somethings. The room, especially around the bed, seemed to be in more disarray than usual. There were odd articles of clothing strewn about, and what looked like several half empty bottles of....something or other lying on the floor. Some of the clothing strewn about looked rather lacy and -- fishnet stockings? Since when did she own fishnet stockings? And that bra over there certainly wasn't....

....wait. What?

Celestia found herself experiencing something that no thousand year old royal Princess, with all the accompanying years of experience and wisdom, should ever experience: deepening befuddlement. She found she rather didn't like it. Her head, she noticed, was throbbing; her mouth tasted like it was full of fur, too. Her discomfort grew. The bedsheets were all sweaty and manky, and there was this heavy, almost...glandular aroma, like....

Her thoughts derailed completely as the blankets next to her stirred. Alarmed, she scooted back to the far side of the bed-- just as the tousled head of the Princess of the Moon popped out from under the pillows. Celestia's little sister, annoyingly enough, WAS a morning person; She was wide awake almost immediately, and looked around her sister's room in rapidly growing alarm. "Celestia, what am I doing here?" She asked. "And why is thine bedroom in such a state?" She regarded the half-empty bottles and scattering of undergarments and other questionable debris with widening eyes. "--Is that a studded collar hanging from thine bedpost?" She pointed with a timorous hoof. For the first time Celestia noticed that several of the items strewn about the room incorporated buckles, straps, and quite probably a very long and unsettling explanation from their owner about their purpose.

Luna paused. In a voice far too small and faint for the normally Wagnerian alicorn, she said, ".....and why are the sheets all sticky?"

There was a moment of silence, a pause not so much pregnant as making its way to the car for the trip to the hospital while its husband ran around frantically looking for the keys. The two royal sisters slowly scooted away from each other and off the bed. Celestia quickly got to her hooves and looked around; her normal expression of benevolent serenity couldn't have been farther away. "I don't know what is going on," she said in a tone of voice that would have made Queen Chrysalis surrender on the spot, "but when I find out..."

Luna prodded the bedclothes with an apprehensive hoof. "....it appears to be maple syrup...."

"I have seen-- and done-- my share of pranks," Celestia continued, "but this crosses every possible line that I-- Luna? Luna, what's wrong?" There was no answer. The lunar princess simply stood frozen on the other side of the bed, forehoof raised in mid poke, Her jaw slack as she gazed with wider and wider eyes at Celestia. Her pinprick pupils flicked up, down, up, down again... then with a gagging, retching noise she spun and galloped from the room as if all the fiends of Tartarus were hot on her heels.

Baffled, Celestia stared after the vanishing cloud of dust, then staggered to the royal bathroom. She realized that something was off about herself; her weight seemed to shift differently and....her body felt wrong somehow. sweet Light, what had happened last night?

The bathroom at least was still normal; a spacious chamber adorned in fine marble and gold fixtures, with all the amenities a pony could wish for. There did seem to be, she noted in passing, a slightly larger selection of bathing oils and lotions than usual. At least she assumed they were bathing oils and lotions.... she trotted past the shelves and stepped in front of the full-length mirror adorning the wall, and gave herself the once-over.

And froze in slack jawed shock at what met her eyes. She stared down at herself in horror; some time in the night, between her going to bed and waking up this morning, she had received some rather radical changes to her undercarriage.

To be brief, she was now, quite explicitly, a stallion.

Well, not entirely a stallion. Further personal investigation revealed that certain other... things... were still present as well, and likewise there were no---

A high pitched sound, like someone strangling a mouse, escaped Celestia's lips. As she stood there, staring down at the abomination wrought upon her, a dark form coalesced into shape in the mirror. Slitted green eyes, midnight black coat, wings as graceful as a swan and as sharp-edged as sin, armor of silver and a mane of stars gathered together, and the visage of Nightmare Moon gazed out upon the world from Celestia's bathroom mirror. The villainous alicorn chuckled malevolently. "ahhaha, at last, I live again! It took ages for me to gather together the wisps of my power, and patiently waiting in the mirror realm-- but now at last, you have fallen into my trap, Celestia! Soon, I shall rule, and the NIGHT--- Shall Last--- hello? Hello, are you listening?"

Celestia didn't reply. Nightmare Moon stepped forward in the mirror and craned her neck. "Pay attention, you foal! What the devil are you looking oh WHAT the HELL?"

There was a brief eternity as the Princess and the would-be usurper both stared at the newest addition to the royal family. Nightmare Moon finally straightened back up and stared off into the middle distance. Her expression was unreadable. "That's it, I'm done. I'm gone, I am outta here. Forget this." She vanished from the mirror in a puff of cosmic discombobulation.

A moment later Celestia found her voice. Her scream blew out all the windows in the tower.

***

On the far side of Canterlot, in a seedy pub on the outskirts of the city, there was a rush of wind and a clap of thunder. The proprietor found himself nose to nose with the Coregent of equestria, Princess Luna. "ALCOHOL!" she bellowed at him in the Royal Canterlot Voice from the other side of the far too narrow bar. He waited a moment for his mane to settle and the bottles behind him to stop rocking. "Alcohol, y-your highness?" he croaked.

"YES! ALL OF IT!"

The bartender cleared his throat, composing himself. "According to the decrees of Faust the First, there are no alcoholic beverages served in---"

"Oh cuttest thou the crap, barkeep," Luna snapped. "Faust didst decree that ale and wine did not exist, but she didst also decree that there wast no such thing as steam engines nor electricity. Tis nobody that is fooled, lest thou thinkest that our loyal subjects spend all cider season drinking foamy mugs of water. Fetch thy fruit of the distillery NOW!" She slammed a hoof on the bar hard enough that furniture across the room danced.

The bartender said not another word; he hastily lined up a half dozen bottles on the countertop, each discreetly labeled--- there was a "root beer", "sarsaparilla," "lemonade," all in colors never seen before in such beverages, and a "Salt Lick" that was suspiciously liquid in form---- in front of the distraught princess and made himself scarce. Luna seized the first bottle (a "ginger ale" quite lacking in ginger), pried the cork out with her teeth, and poured herself a double without benefit of the shot glass.

A misty dark form coalesced in the mirror behind the bar. "so there you are," Nightmare Moon said.

Luna started, then got to her hooves, glaring. "So, villain! Thou hast returned! Twas THY doing that this day---"

"Oh gawds and little green apples, don't start that," Nightmare Moon said, facehoofing. "Not after what I've seen today." She gagged slightly. "Just shut up, sit down and PLEASE tell me that's forty proof in front of you."

Luna sat down, staring suspiciously at the spectre. "So thou art not responsible for my sister's...." she shuddered all over "condition?"

"So you saw it too, huh? Oh come ON Luna, do you think, in any possible universe in all of existence that there is one where any of my plans for making the Night Eternal involve giving your sister a weiner?"

"Don't say it!!"

"That bad, huh?"

Luna slumped on her stool, her eyes haunted. "Two words for thee, villain: MORNING WOOD."

The pregnancy rate for pauses gained another statistic. The mirror-bound wraith shivered all over from hoof to wingtip in atavistic revulsion. "Set up those shot glasses, girl." Luna meekly obeyed. The Nightmare eyed the row of shot glasses-- or rather their reflections--- with a practiced eye. "okay, start pouring."

"When shalt I stop?"

"When neither of us can remember our bleepin' NAMES, much less what happened today." The Nightmare grabbed the first mirror-shot in her hoof and slugged it back.

Chapter 4

Meanwhile, back at the castle, Princess Celestia was making her way at speed to the castle sculpture gardens. She had a blanket wrapped around her torso, a hammer and chisel in her telekinetic grip, and bloody murder on her mind. She didn't bother with finding her way through the hedge maze to her target; she simply burned a path straight through and marched in over the still smouldering ashes. Under other circumstances she might have teleported or flown, but she was too distraught for the first and as for the second, the thought that someone below might look up and see under her makeshift skirt was enough to give her the staring horrors.

Ground bound or not, she soon made her way to her quarry. She stomped to a halt before the petrified form of the Avatar of Chaos, breathing heavily. "Discord! DISCORD!!" she all but shrieked, steam snorting from her nostrils. "I know you're in there, and I know you can hear me! I do not know how you've done this while still imprisoned and I don't care. But you'd better undo all this or I swear by all my ancestors that I will use this hammer and chisel and turn you into a rock garden!!"

There was no reply. Sputtering with rage, Celestia lit her horn, tweaking the spell holding Discord captive just the tiniest bit.

A moment passed. Celestia felt the sensation of eyes passing over her, regarding her with barely interested disdain. Discord's dry, snarky voice echoed in the ether from the depths of the stone. "Well hello to you too, Celestia," the chaos entity said. "Something troubling you?"

"No more horseapples, Discord, I mean it," Celestia snarled. "Undo your chaos magic or we both get to find out how creative I am at stonecarving."

"Magic? Chaos magic? Mine? Honestly Celestia, perhaps you haven't noticed but I'm still imprisoned. As much as I'd love to take credit for whatever has gotten you into such a mood but hey hey hey hey what are you doing *WAITAMINUTE CAN'T WE TALK THIS OVER??"*** Discord's ethereal voice rapidly climbed to a panicked shriek. As well it should; there was now a cold steel chisel pressed against his block and tackle. "Please, I need those!! Whatever it is, I swear I didn't do it!"

Celestia raised her hammer, ready to strike. "And why should I believe you?" She asked, her voice as cold and sharp as the chisel.

"I give you my word, I swear it by all the gods and imps of the Draconequus, it wasn't me! I haven't been able to so much as twitch my magical pinkie since you stuck me here! And how could it be me if I don't even know what it is you're talking about couldyouPLEASEmovethatchisel???" Scowling, Celestia let the chisel and hammer drop. There was a profound sigh of relief from the draconequus. "Now that you're willing to listen to reason," he said, "what in Tartarus has got you this het up?"

"Someone, or some thing, has been making alterations," she growled. "To my kingdom. to my people. to me. *Disgusting*** alterations. The kind that only your type of chaos could even conceive of, let alone create."

"What sort of alterations?" Discord asked. "Because really, other than your current bad mood I don't see any oh, my, gods." Even as he was speaking, Celestia stepped back and let the blanket wrapped around her barrel drop to the grass. She stood there letting the draconequus get an eyeful of the new non-standard feature now slung under her belly. If she'd retained any doubt that Discord was innocent of this, it was dispelled; all that was coming from the imprisoned chaos god were gabbled broken sounds of shock. "...I... that..that is disgust--.... what in Creation?" He finally managed.

"I awoke this morning to find myself... like this," she said.

"And you thought I did it??" Discord said in outrage. "This sort of thing isn't my style! Good gods, Celestia, I'm a deranged half-mad demigod of chaos and anarchy but I thought you knew me better than that...!"

"This is not the worst of it," Celestia said. " There have been--"

"For Equestria's sake, could you cover that back up? I can't even blink here!"

The fuming princess complied. "As I was saying, this is not even the worst of it," she continued. "My bedroom looks like the aftermath of a booze-laden orgy. My closets and dressers have been filled with.... accoutrements and devices," she shuddered, "that I would rather not describe. All my photos and portraits that used to be of my friends and loved ones have been magically transformed. they now show me engaged in---disgusting acts with them..." she shuddered again, almost weeping at the sense of violation.

"That much I could still assume it was some prankster... sick, diseased, foul-minded prankster.... But the things I found elsewhere in the palace....

"I saw portraits and statues, easily hundreds of years old... portraits and statues of me crushing armies under my hoof, subjugating peasants, waging slaughter-- statues of me engaging in lewd acts with stallions and mares alike-- and with gryphons, dragons-- I think one had me with a group of diamond dogs---" she paused to gag. "the maids and servants, I saw some with iron collars... the maid uniforms had been recut to...." she made gestures with her hoof... "and--- fishnet stockings and--- .....everypony was afraid of me. Even the guards backed out of any room I entered, like they were afraid I would pounce on them from behind. I found an entire class of schoolchildren locked in my dungeon... schoolchildren! They claimed that I put them there after one of them told me that Luna was his favorite princess instead of me..."

"But every time I found anything that looked remotely normal, anypony that was remotely the same as I remembered them the day before.... I would try to show them what I'd just seen and it would be gone.... My own bloody castle has turned into a funhouse mirror maze. Who else would I think responsible but you?"

Discord listened quietly to the pony's manic tirade. He found himself gagging at the descriptions of some of the things she'd seen. Bright colorful mayhem was his thing, not.... this. "It certainly ISN'T me," he said.

"Then who? Or what? One of your kind or kin, then?"

"Perhaps. Maybe I can help you find out."

Celestia, canny old girl, was immediately suspicious. "How?" she asked.

"You'll have to undo the spells binding me a little more. Not much, just another notch or so. Just enough for me to 'look around' as it were."

"Why should I trust you?" Celestia demanded.

"Because you have no choice," Discord replied. "I'm your only option here. I can see things, sense things that you can't, that no other pony can. It's either let me take a look, or go on flailing around completely blind. Your call."

Celestia sighed. "So be it," she said. Her horn began to glow. "But be warned, Discord, try even one trick and---"

"And it's off to the rock garden with my nads, I know, I know," Discord said irritably. "Can we get on with this?"

Celestia closed her eyes and concentrated. What she was doing was not easy; it was the equivalent of opening the door to Discord's dungeon cell a tiny crack, just enough for him to see out, while leaning against it with all her strength to keep him from lunging for an escape. Eldritch light crept over the petrified Draconequus, seeping into the stone. The dungeon door cracked open....

"Close it, close it, close it up again!" Discord hissed.

Surprised, Celestia shut off the spell. The enchantment imprisoning Discord resumed its airtight seal. To her shock, Discord actually sighed in relief as the binding closed around him again. "That was a close one," he said.

"What was a close one?" Celestia said, her voice filled with dread.

"Dear gods and little green apples, Tia," Discord muttered. "This is no prank. This isn't even the work of a draconequus. Oh no no no, this is something far far worse."

"What is it?"

"Celestia," Discord said. His voice was sober and serious, which was more frightening than anything else that had happened that day. ".... I need to show you an example. That statue over there, the one holding the flag. Check it over with your magic, like you did me."

Puzzled, Celestia stepped over to the statue. It was one of several dozen she had commissioned over the last few decades for the gardens; a simple nondescript pony statue, this one symbolizing patriotism. There was nothing extraordinary about it.

Or was there? Something was wrong. This couldn't be the same statue. She remembered seeing the sculptor at work on this piece, not twenty years past. But this statue was old, at least several hundred years old, her magic told her. She scanned deeper---

ohpleaseohpleaseletmeoutohpleaseohplease

Celestia started back with a cry of horror. "There's a pony in there!" she cried out. Without a second thought she undid the petrification spell. Cold stone turned to warm flesh, and a gray earth pony with a G clef cutie mark sprawled in the grass at her hooves.

The poor creature wailed in relief, gasping for air. She looked up and realized she was sprawled at the feet of one of the Princesses. She gave a shriek of fright and pulled herself into a groveling bow. "Oh thank you thank you your Highness, I swear I will never disrespect you ever again oh mercy please---"

"Who are you, my little pony?" Celestia gasped. "Who put you here like this?"

"Y-you did, your Highness," the pony quavered. "My name is Octavia. You turned me to stone five hundred years ago for disgracing your birthday celebration with my poor cello playing--- please, oh please, can I go home, please don't turn me back to stone..."

Celestia stepped forward, tried to think of something comforting to say. The musician only cried out and cowered lower as she approached. "You are free to go, Octavia," Celestia whispered.

The pony got to her hooves and ran as if the Devil himself were at her heels. She disappeared around a bend in the hedge maze, vanishing from sight.

Celestia staggered back, reeling. "How?" she said plaintively. "I never... I would never...."

"Never change a pony to stone?" Discord said dryly. " Ironically I believe you. Other than myself, I mean."

"You don't understand," Celestia said. "I know that pony. She performed at the last Grand Galloping Gala! And that statue, it was only two decades old if that! How could she have been imprisoned for five centuries in a statue only twenty years old?"

"You wanna have some real fun?" Discord asked. "Look at the statue."

"What stat---" Celestia cut herself off. The statue was back, right where it had been.

"Surprise," Discord said. "And no, it wasn't me THAT time, either." Celestia ignored him and stepped forward, quickly scanning the statue with her magic again. This time it was stone. Nothing but stone... .carved less than twenty years ago. "Oh, don't worry about Octavia by the way," Discord said. "She'll simply merge back together with her original self, or her real self, or her other self-- however you look at it-- and her little experience as a tyrant's lawn ornament will be nothing more than a passing unpleasant fancy."

Celestia wheeled about and faced the statue. "What is happening?" she demanded. "Who or what is causing this??"

"I don't know exactly," the draconequus clarified. "Not precisely. But it's something far more dreadful than any draconequus or Nightmare or changeling queen. Someone, or something, has basically gotten root access to the universe."

"Root..."

"Think of it as having a key to the very foundations of reality," Discord said. "The machinery under the machinery under the machinery. Someone--- a very petty, malicious, and trivial someone-- now has his her or its hands, hooves, claws or tentacles on the steering wheel to the world. Or one of the important wheels, anyway. They're mucking about where Draconequi dare not to go. They're retconning things."

"Ret..."

"Let me continue or this conversation is going to get very lopsided. Where was I? Oh yes, steering wheel to the world. Whoever is out there has somehow gotten control--- or partial control--- of everyone's backstory. Yours, mine, everyone in Equestria. They want to make changes in how things are, so they're changing our pasts."

"Rewriting history," Celestia breathed, her heart chilling.

"No, rewriting YOUR story," Discord corrected. "And rewriting Twilight Sparkle's story, and Luna's story, and MY story..." he paused and gulped, remembering what he'd seen. All those reinterpretations of Discord, hovering just outside his prison, waiting to pounce... "It's not like he's going into the past and, I dunno, shooting your grandmother's parlor maid. It's more akin to editing a book, one random paragraph at a time. Then trying to make all the random bits he's changed fit together again."

"If he's changing our pasts, our stories, then how do we know what's happening?"

"Because he's a ham-fisted clod who doesn't know what he's doing. He's just slapping patches down over top of what's already there. But they don't work right. They run contrary to the very fundamental nature of what Equestria is, so they peel off and fall away with just the slightest nudge by logic, by memory, by one's personality reasserting itself.... That's how you get a castle that alternates between Canterlot Castle and Celestia's Bondage Playhouse. How you wake up and find old family photos.... or your own anatomy.... are looking entirely different than you remember."

"How a pony musician barely in her majority can be trapped for five hundred years in a statue barely twenty years old," Celestia murmured. "Why are they doing this??"

"For their own petty amusement," Discord answered, cynically. "I could almost relate. But I like toying with the universe as it IS... not fundamentally breaking it. I wanted to add a little chaos to your world, add a little FUN. This... creature... wants to take your sweet little sugar-bowl world and turn it into well, a CRAPHOLE."

Celestia regarded the petrified trickster, brooding. "Why are you helping me, Discord?"

"I'd think that'd be obvious. Look at what he's trying to do to you. He's trying to take you--- sweet noble goody-two-shoes Celestia, princess, ruler and mother figure to all the little ponies--- and rewrite you into..."

"A sadistic tyrannical hermaphrodite nymphomaniac," Celestia deadpanned.

"Tyrantlestia. Trollestia. Molestia?" she could almost hear the smirk in Discord's voice. "But if you think your revisions are horrific... feel free to ponder mine. Whoever-He-Is apparently doesn't think my crimes were horrific enough. One of the revisions he's got hovering in the wings for me is that I forced ponies to eat the roasted flesh of their own children."

Celestia gagged, horrified. "Can he... succeed in changing us?" she whispered.

"It's hard to say. Not likely, I don't think. Not the way he's doing it now. But even if he doesn't change Equestria permanently.... will it matter after he's driven everypony insane?"

Celestia had to admit the chaos god had a grim point. "So what can we do?"

"Nothing, pretty much," Discord said. " Draconequi don't know much about the whatever-they-are that do this sort of thing. Only thing I know is that the only one who can stop them--- and this is folklore, really--- is with someone who, and I quote, "got broken by the fourth wall. They're the only ones who can zero in on where this cosmic schmuck is hiding."

"Isn't that 'Broke the fourth wall?' " Celestia said.

"I said what I meant," Discord said grudgingly. "For now pretty much all you can do is handle things one at a time. If things are getting weird, don't just roll with it, point it out. That usually snaps things back. If that doesn't work? clop 'em on the head. "

Celestia turned to go. "Then farewell til this all ends, Discord," She said.

"Oh princess? BTW? Looks like Mr. Happy finally checked out." Celestia looked down, sighed in relief and dropped the blanket for good. A moment later she'd left the maze, running for the castle.

Discord pondered his fate. Here he was, stuck in a universe being imperiled by some unknown, cretinous boob with the aesthetics of an arsonist and the IQ of a toilet plunger, frozen in stone, locked away from all his power. Still helpless. Save for one tiny mistake on Celestia's part.

She'd forgotten to silence him again.

He considered the possibilities of this newfound freedom. If he was careful, and survived this new threat to Equestria, this might prove advantageous later on.

For now though, he was gonna scare the HELL out of some pigeons.

Chapter 5

Pinkamena was having a bad day. Of course, Pinkamena being Pinkamena, that was scarcely anything unusual.... if she had a great day, she really wasn't herself. And in this case the circumstances around her being herself had kept her on the trot back and forth across Ponyville. She'd yet to even give Canterlot the once over; thank all things bright and canonical that most outbreaks like this seemed to just hang around Ponyville--- like a pedophile "just hung around" a kindergarten playground.

After all, she was just one pony. Technically.

The pink pony trotted up to the door of Carousel boutique and knocked. A moment later she heard the latch being undone. "In a minute," the proprietor trilled through the closed door as she undid the locks; a good half dozen of them from the sound of it. Pinkamena reflected. Yesterday she'd only had a single latch....

An eye peeked out through the curtains. "Oh... it's you." The door opened, the chime carefully silenced with an alabaster hoof. Rarity stood there in her favorite silk robe, her fluttering lashes heavy with kohl. Once she was certain Pinkamena was alone on the street, she gave a sultry smile and let her robe slip off her shoulders. It slid to the floor and puddled at her hooves, revealing her to Pinkie's eyes. She wore black silk stockings on her legs, and a studded choker around her throat. Angry red welts and barely-healed cuts, precise and methodical in their placement, marked the unicorn's skin. A scar, still dark and healing, was cut in the shape of a heart over her chest. "Oh, darling," Rarity purred, edging closer. "Is it time for our little games together again--"

Smiling happily, Pinkie raised one hoof, drew back, and socked the unicorn right in the eye.

It was no love tap; Rarity went sailing. She flew backwards through her own front door and landed on her back on the floor, face rapidly swelling purple. "What-- what---" She sat up, gasping in shock, nursing her blackened eye, mascara beginning to run. Give her credit, she tried to step back into role. Her lip trembled as she quavered in her best seductive voice. "What did I do?!?... have I been--- a naughty pony, PinkieEEEYAIAYAIYAIYIYAYIAYAIII!"

Her surely award-winning S+M performance had been cut off quite anticlimactically when Pinkie produced a pitcher of ice water from behind her back and poured it, ice and all, straight on the fashionista's crotch. Rarity sat on the floor clutching herself, mane standing straight out, eyes bulging and teeth chattering, as Lady Lust in her leather and lace hiked up her skirts and bolted for warmer climes. "Not in the mood tonight, Snoogiepoops," Pinkamena deadpanned. the pitcher went sailing with a smash. She looked around for further signs--- and noticed that Rarity's precious pristine robe was stained at the hem with dirt. "Okay, where's the basement this time?"

Sniffing, Rarity pointed further into the boutique. There against a normally blank wall stood a door. It was slightly ajar, and there were clods of dirt marring the floor around it. "Okie dokie lokie," Pinkamena muttered, bracing herself. She marched to the door, and flung it open. Dimly lit stairs led down below.

There was a shift... but only partially. Someone was still busy at work. Rarity got to her hooves and stumbled frantically over to where Pinkie stood framed in the basement doorway. "No wait, I can explain..."

Pinkamena spun on her heel, pointed to the mud-spattered floor, and sucked in a gasp that would have done a jet engine proud. "Look! Rarity! DIRT!!" Rarity looked down and saw where the flecks of mud were slowly grinding their way into her pristine floors. "NYAAAAGH!!" she screamed. Forgetting all else, she dashed off and reappeared with a scrub brush and a bucket of steaming soapy water. She fell to her knees and began scouring her precious floors as if for her very life.

Seeing Rarity was successfully preoccupied, Pinkamena nodded and clopped down to the basement.

It was a crude, unfinished chamber. The walls were spartan brick, crudely mortared; half the floor was still bare earth. Bricklaying and cement-mixing tools lay scattered about. From the look of it Rarity was actually trying to do all the work herself, single hoofed. There were no bodies yet; none of the tools were spattered with grue. Pinkamena knew better than to be prematurely relieved, though.

On the far side of the room from the staircase was a stone doorway in the process of being bricked up. Pinkamena could see pipes and the top of what had to be a water heater above the unfinished brick. The mortar still gleamed wet; Rarity had been hard at work when Pinkamena had interrupted her.

Rarity. Laying mortar. Sometimes the enemy made it all too easy.

Pinkamena took a step closer when a little curly-topped head peeked over the top row of bricks. "Hi Pinkie," Sweetie Belle said. "Me 'n Rarity are playing a game." Pinkie stopped in mid stride, then moved forward again, carefully.

The white, pastel maned little filly watched her with blank, unintelligent eyes. She smiled thoughtlessly as Pinkamena looked inside the half-bricked-off chamber. Pinkamena calmed slightly; there was no whiff of malevolence or sinister intent around the little unicorn. But there was no sparkle of intelligence in her eyes. The normally bright and clever filly seemed about as attentive as a plank of wood. "A game?" she asked, looking down into the little room.

It was the water heater closet, all right. Sweetie Belle was sitting in the tiny cramped space, hooves folded, smiling blankly. there was nothing else in the room but a bottle of bleach, some rags, and a bucket that--- that Pinkie could guess the use of by the aroma. "Like my room?" Sweetie Belle said brightly. "Rarity's fixing it up for me. She says once she finishes I'll have a whole new wall." She patted her hoof against the fresh brick. "I asked where the door would be but she says not to worry about that..." The filly took one of the rags, poured some bleach on it and began absently rubbing it over her coat.

Pinkamena watched; with growing horror she realized the filly was absolutely covered with bleach burns, the red, angry skin swelling under her white coat. "Sweetie, what's the bleach for?" she asked carefully.

Sweetie Belle looked down, inexplicably ashamed. "I have to wash with it," She said. "Or my coat starts turning grey. Rarity says it's a bad bad secret that nobody should ever see....they might think I'm not Mommy and Daddy's girl. They're white unicorns, Rarity's a white unicorn.... one of Rarity's stallion friends is grey though---" she trailed off.

Pinkamena got it. Even old school Pinkie Pie, whose head was full of Pepsi and pop rocks at the best of times, would have figured that one out. "Come here, Sweetie," she said, reaching over the brick wall. "I think you need to come out of there now." Sweetie happily climbed into Pinkamena's forelegs. Pinkamena lifted the filly out and, unable to resist the impulse, cuddled her briefly--- careful to not let the filly see the tears clouding her eyes.... or the expression of icy rage that crossed her face. "You go on upstairs, silly filly," she said. "I gotta fix some things."

"Okay..." Sweetie said. She hopped down and galloped up the stairs--- rushing past Rarity, who was traipsing her way down.

There was a shift, almost a ripple in the air... Rarity staggered her way down the rest of the stairs, blinking in confusion, her spotless silk robe trailing behind her. "Pinkie Pie! Where.... where did all this... come from?" She waved one white hoof at the basement. Through the robe Pinkamena could see that the welts and scars were already gone.

"Don'tcha remember?" she asked in her best Pinky voice. "You made it!"

Rarity stopped in the middle of the floor, started, then laughed. "Oh don't be silly, Pinkie dear. This sort of thing is work for construction ponies... big BURLY construction ponies... with lots of muscles.... rippling under their swarthy coats--- where was I? Forget that, dear, would you? Back to the point, what is all this doing under my Boutique??" She patted one flawless cheek in confusion.

Pinkamena regarded her narrowly. "You really don't remember?" she asked carefully. Rarity shook her head. "Rarity... where's Sweetie Belle's room?"

"Why it's right upstai--" Rarity blinked. A dawning horror spread across her face as her gaze fell on the half-sealed little crypt. "N-no.... she said, pointing at it with one hoof. "It's-- it's right there. But that doesn't make any sense, why in the world would my little sister be living and sleeping in there when she has a room up... stairs...." The ripple in the air grew, pushed. "And she was in there now, and I was bricking... bricking her.... oh sweet Celestia, I was bricking her into the wall, what was I doing, why would I be bricking my little baby sister alive into a basement wall oh no *oh gods oh what am I doing what's happening---"*** the unicorn's voice spiraled higher and higher till she finally reared up on her back hooves and fell over in a dead, and for once quite real, faint. She landed in the muddy half of the floor with an ignominious splat.

There was a clattering at the top of the stairs. Sweetie Belle reappeared, looking around in confusion. "Rarity? Are you down here? What is all this, I didn't know Carousel Boutique had a basement--- Oh hey Pinkie. I heard Rarity screaming, is everything okay? Whoa," she said in the next breath as she spotted her sister sprawled in the mud. "I guess not. Gosh, should I get the Doctor?"

"Nah," Pinkamena said cheerily. "Rarity just had a faintsy-waintsy. She needs a little trip to the Spa." She levered the fashionista out of the mud with her nose and flipped her onto her back. "Gee, I guess I do too," she giggled, looking down at her mud-spattered self. She shifted Rarity's weight up on her shoulders and started up the stairs. "I'll just take her there myself. Why don't you go find the other Cutie Mark Crusaders today? I think Rarity needs a little "alone" time."

"O-okay," the filly said uncertainly. "If you're sure..."

"Sure I'm sure! Here," Pinkamena tossed the filly three bits. "Get yourselves something at Sugarcube Corner, my treat!"

"Thanks!" Beaming, Sweetie Belle took her loot and bolted. Pinkamena carried Rarity up into the Boutique. She paused only long enough to kick the basement door shut and latch it. Firmly. And moved one of Rarity's family portraits-- of her, her sister, and her parents (a white mustachioed pony in a straw hat and a pink, blue maned unicorn) over the door. By the time she had left the front door of the Boutique and begun trotting her way to the Aloe and Lotus spa, the ominous door had already faded away as if it had never been.

***

Twilight staggered in through the library door, weary and bedraggled. The... insanity outbreaks... had been getting worse. She'd had to calm down three different ponies who were weeping in hysterics over dead foals they'd never actually had, had to convince Rainbow Dash three different times that Scootaloo was not an orphan and had not died alone in the snow last night ( it was JUNE) and had to make a ultra-emergency super-boosted long range teleport to her brother's place when she'd received a panicked letter from him claiming that Cadence had turned out to be Queen Chrysalis in disguise again and was trying to suck out his soul. (One blow with a hastily-flung flower pot and "Chrysalis" had turned back into Cadence, who was now nursing a lump on her head while her husband nursed hurt feelings on the couch.)

She'd returned home in time to find half Cheerilee's students clustered on the roof of the school yelling in panic while Cheerilee ran about below with sharpened gardening tools and ranted about "expanding the garden," while the other half led by Pipsqueak were cornered in the candy shoppe by a chainsaw-wielding Twist, who "jutht wanted to help Pinkie make thome cupcaketh." Violent electric shocks (Twilight was in no mood) had subdued the two of them.

When that had failed to drive Twilight Sparkle out of her mind, she had promptly run into AppleBloom. A very hugely pregnant AppleBloom, who had insisted that Spike was the father.... before Twilight's twitching brain could begin to compose a rant on just how physically, medically and biologically impossible this alleged situation was, she had turned around and AppleBloom and her pregnancy were both gone. She had seen her later halfway down Main Street, playing with the other Cutie Mark Crusaders and most explicitly not pregnant.

And she didn't know what had happened between Big MacIntosh and Caramel, but they had seen each other in the street, screamed like fillies on helium, and run in opposite directions as fast as they could go.

She needed a nap. She needed a drink. She needed her Mommy and a glass of milk and a plate of cookies. She switched on the light.

She needed to start locking the door when she left the house.

Standing at the top of the stairs leading to her bedroom was what appeared to be a tall, muscular, half-shaved, half naked monkey. It was six foot tall, with bald, tannish-pink skin and a yellow thatch of a mane. It was clothed, thank Celestia-- at least partially; it was wearing pants, and was bare from the waist up. It's chiseled abdomen and chest rippled as it flexed its way into a "casual" pose at the top of the stairs. Sparks of energy crackled from its fingers as it ran them through it's mane. "Oh, hey there, Twilight Sparkle," it said, flashing her a pearly white grin. ". My name's Kyle. I think you left one of your spells running and accidentally summoned me to Equestria. Oh, and I seem to have gained phenomenal magic powers by being brought here. I think I'll turn into a dragon later and save the world, but right now I'd like to befriend all the Elements of Harmony and have sex with some of them. Say, you're looking pretty sexy for a quadruped--- whaddya say?"

Had Kyle been a little sharper, he might have noticed the expression on Twilight's face. Had he been Spike, he would have already been running. As it was, the Phenomenally Gifted Magical Shapeshifting Human from Another Dimension, Intended Pinkie Pie Porker, and Future Savior of Equestria was a little... slow.

Keep note. The ponies of Equestria are not a violent or bloodthirsty race. Killing and bloodshed are alien concepts to them, for the most part. Twilight, at least, was a meek, mild-mannered scholar who under even abnormal circumstances would scarcely raise a hoof to another pony, much less use lethal force. She'd never even so much as wilfully killed a bug in her life.

Out in Ponyville, ponies were going about their daily business... or at least trying to, with the intermittent reality-warping mayhem going on. There was a loud "whoompf" from down the street. The windows of the local library flashed with a brilliant actinic purple, and from the upper window shot a smoking severed Human head. It flew in a graceful arc a hundred yards down the street, bounced three times and rolled to a halt at the center of the market square, face up. Smoke curled up from the blackened hair; ponies could see the look of surprise frozen on its face.

Mayhem ensued.

Twilight walked back out of the library and started walking, heedless of the stampeding ponies all around her. Her eyes twitched--- check that, pretty much everything was twitching. She marched down the street to where the remains of "Kyle" had rolled to a halt. The head, naturally, was already gone. She kept walking, looking neither left nor right. It was time for a little visit to the spa. She wondered idly if Aloe and Lotus still kept that bottle of "tonic water" under the counter....

Chapter 6

Twilight arrived at the Aloe and Lotus Spa just in time to find an alarmingly straight-haired Pinkie Pie, with a comatose Rarity draped across her back, pounding on the 'ring for service' bell with one hoof and shouting angrily into the back of the spa. "C'MON, WHAT'S THE HOLDUP? WE HAVE A SPA-RELATED EMERGENCY OUT HERE!! Oh hello Twilight," she said, un-Pinkylike stress and exasperation in her voice. "Rarity's had herself a bit of an experience, so I brought her here for a Black Friday Special."

It was telling that Twilight didn't even pause to exclaim A Black Friday Special? She simply replied "make it a double," and joined Pinky at the counter. The purple unicorn set her gift from Pinkie Pie--- a coupon for a day at the spa--- by the register and rested her frazzled head on the cool tile counter and waited wearily for either her service or unconsciousness.

Pinkamena sized up Twilight appraisingly. "Uh huh, so you've been picking up on it too," she said cryptically. "What happened?"

Twilight didn't even question. "giant ego-tripping bald monkey appeared in the library and wanted to bump uglies with me," she said. The pink pony, she noted, didn't even blink. She nodded at Rarity. "And her?"

Pinkamena thought. "Ever read 'the Cask of Amontillado' by Edgar Allan Pony?"

"Yeah. Somepony almost bricked Rarity into a wall?"

"Rarity almost bricked Sweetie Belle into a wall," Pinkamena said. "She sorta had a little fainty spell when she snapped out of it." She gave Twilight a frighteningly sober look. "She's gonna remember that." Pinky looked around.

"Let me go see what the hold up is," Twilight said. She walked around the counter and back through the swinging doors.

And then walked back out. And then back out through the front door. And then back IN the front door, trailing a garden hose behind her, and disappeared back through the swinging doors. There was the loud FSSSSSSHHHHHH of a garden hose at full blast and two feminine screeches. Twilight reappeared and threw the slack of the hose behind the counter before rejoining her friends; shortly thereafter two drenched fillies--- one pink-and-teal, the other teal-and-pink-- came staggering out to the counter, their faces frozen in shock, and refusing to meet each other's eyes. "W-we apologize," Aloe said, her voice shaky. "We do not-- do not know what 'appened..." She and her sister shared a quick, horrified glance, then hastily looked away. "'Ow can we 'elp you...?.... aheh..."

Pinkamena looked at Twilight. "What..."

"In the back room swapping spit," Twilight said. "I hosed 'em down before they did anything too emotionally scarring. That'll be two, no THREE Black Friday Specials, please..."

Aloe and Lotus both blanched. A Black Friday Special was high-priced special reserve, and only used for the direst circumstances. The last time it had been used was when it had gotten its name--- when Snips and Snails had somehow managed, right on the eve of an important fashion show, to detonate a barrel of tar in the Carousel Boutique showroom.... It had taken all of Aloe and Lotus' most potent arts to get Rarity out of the fetal position and breathing normally.

"Better make it an open group rating," Pinkamena said, her eyes heavy-lidded. "The others will probably be joining us soon."Twilight looked at her, mystified.

Just as Aloe and Lotus were about to bustle into the back to set things up, the front door was kicked open with a bang. Rainbow Dash flew in, slammed the door and leaned against it. Her expression of terror was priceless. "HIDE ME!" she shrieked. The rest of them gaped at her as she ran into the middle of the room, dancing on her hooftips and desperately looking around for a better hiding place.

"Okay, I'll ask. What?" Pinkamena said.

Rainbow Dash rushed over and put her nose an inch from Pinkamena's. "Sick weird perverts are after me!"

"....Aaaand so I repeat. What?"

Rainbow's voice dropped to a squeaky rasp. "I was just taking a nap in the park, minding my own business, when all of a sudden I feel HOOVES on my flank," she said. "I wake up, and it's Lyra and BonBon, rubbing my flanks and making eyes at me while I was asleep." She shuddered in revulsion at the memory. "I jump up and wanna know what the HAY is going on, and they start going on about how I need to 'come out of the closet' and how everyone knows I'm a filly fooler, and ain't they JUST the ones to show me the ropes---" Rainbow Dash stopped and ground her teeth together, flailing her forehooves at the air. "Where do they get off--- Is THAT how it works? I just HAVE to be a...a... because I don't dress all frilly froo froo and I like sports? Is that it?? I'm STRAIGHT, darn it, just like ninety nine percent of the rest of the world! Go find somebody else to be your fetish, ya---"

She stopped, panting. "Anyhow I told 'em off. But they weren't taking no for an answer! They start cooing about how I'm in denial and pawing at me"--- she paused to gag--- "and then it got worse!"

"...Worse?" Twilight asked, dreading.

"You know that colt with the tennis racket?" She said. "Big beard, hairy chest? Turns out he's gay."

".....What." This from every female in the room still conscious.

"Gayer than a tree full of monkeys on laughing gas," Rainbow asserted. "He comes over and gets involved. Starts talking about how maybe I'm not comfortable with my sexual identity yet and maybe I'm fishing the wrong side of the stream.... Turns out he thinks I'm a colt in drag."

"....WHAT?" It was getting repetitious, but it was begging to be said.

"A colt in drag!" Rainbow said again.

Twilight looked Rainbow over in bafflement. "But you're not.... I mean you don't even wear---"

"I don't know how he thought I was pulling it off, and I don't WANNA know. He started going on about how a 'tender young colt like me' needed a 'gentle, experienced hoof..." She paused to make gagging motions, pretending to stick her hoof down her throat. "And then Lyra and BonBon started getting all huffy and arguing and--"

"Well what did you do?"

Rainbow was rapidly winding up into hysterics. "I bolted! But wherever I've gone all day there's been some filly-fooler trying to hoof me up... I saw you guys go in here and decided it had to be safer than out there." She turned to Twilight, frantic. "Help me! I don't like it when fillies try to touch me in my bathing suit places!"

There was a knock at the door. "Hide me! I'll pay anything!" the technicolor Pegasus screamed. She slapped a tattered coupon down by the register and dove behind the counter.

The door opened. In staggered, of all ponies, Applejack. Her hooves were tangled and her face was a vivid green. "Oh sweet Celestia, Luna, and Discord," she swore, gagging. Before anyone could react, she dashed across the waiting area, tossed her hat aside and puked in the aquarium.

Aloe and Lotus' outraged shrieks were paid no heed. The two beauticians dashed in to try and rescue their tropical fish from a horrific fate while the others dashed in to catch Applejack as she slumped to the ground. "Applejack-- what happened?" Twilight cried, cradling Applejack's head.

The farmpony groggily looked up at them. "Guh-Granny Smith," she said weakly.

"Oh no, is Granny Smith all right?"

"Oh sweet mercy," Applejack groaned. "She ain't RIGHT, that's fer sure..." She looked up at Pinkie. "She showed me th' family movies."

"What family movies?" Twilight said. "She has hundreds."

"Not lahk this." Applejack sat up and shook her head carefully. Pinkamena, with surprising gentleness, set her hat back on her head. "Ah come in today from the fields and she starts goin' off on a bender.... about how Big MacIntosh and I are neglectin' our daughter Applebloom."

"What." Twilight's voice was as flat as a mesa.

The farmpony just nodded. "Ah thought she'd just took a little turn, but then she pulls out a film projector and a film of when Applebloom was born..."

"Oh, footage of you with Applebloom when she was a baby...?"

Applejack's eyes burned. "NO, Twilight," she stressed. "Of when Applebloom was BORN. Live. Full color. Action shots."

There was a long, awful silence. "Omigawsh, they do that? Ewwwww!" Rainbow exclaimed from her place behind the counter.

"--An', an' ah don't know how... but it was me! My coat, my cutie mark.... " She turned green again. " Looked lahk someone pulling a greased badger through a cat door...." There was a chorus of 'ewwwwwwws' from around the room. "Never gonna let no stallion TOUCH me, never never never never," Applejack moaned, burying her face in her hooves.

Twilight tried to get her brain on an even keel again. " Bu bu buh... where'd she--- you and Big Mac???"

"She had footage. Of the conception." Applejack's voice was the rasp of death.

Silence fell as images flashed across a half-dozen filly brains. Their expressions of horror could only be compared to Rarity's when she had returned to her ravaged store after the parasprite attack and discovered that parasprites were not, in fact, housebroken. "Oh, good night," Twilight choked.

"With your BROTHER? EEEUEUEUUWWWW!!!" Rainbow dash gagged and fell out of sight behind the countertop.

The cacophony of revulsion that went up was deafening. "Brain Bleach, Brain Bleach!" Twilight whimpered, banging the counter with her forehead.

There was a strangely low-angled knock at the door. With some trepidation, Lotus opened it. In came none other than Angel, towing mightily on the handle of a little red wagon. Curled up in the wagon in a pink and yellow ball was Fluttershy. She was quivering like a leaf and saying over and over again, "Don't look in the toolshed, don't look in the toolshed, don't look in the toolshed...."

Lotus and Aloe helped the rabbit tow the wagon the rest of the way into the spa. "Black Friday?" Aloe asked. Angel nodded. He held out a carefully folded coupon in one paw. Aloe took it and put it by the others. "Verra good, we haf it covered, Angel," Lotus said. He gave them a salute and hopped his way out the door.

"Well, if we didn't need it before we need it now," Pinkamena said. She handed Aloe and Lotus two more slips of paper. "fire up the jacuzzi ladies."

In a short space, the fillies were all up to their necks in the spa's oversize jacuzzi. Dozens of aromatherapy candles and incense burners were smoking away around the room. The tub was surrounded by dozens of half-devoured boxes of chocolates and pints of quadruple fudge ice cream, at least four or five plush comfort dolls, and the gallon jug of "tonic water" had made two full laps round the room as the girls alternated between tearful hysterics and glaze-eyed recitations of the things they'd seen or even found themselves doing. Rainbow Dash had still been too squicked out to join them in the hot tub; Aloe and Lotus insightfully had wheeled out a massage table and their swarthiest and most muscular masseuse, Hans, to tend to the gender-identity-violated pegasus. She was face down in a bucket of hot fudge as Hans vigorously pummeled her lats.

"What could be causing all this?" Applejack lamented, taking a swig off the bottle. "We've had strange things happen in town before but nothing like... like THIS." She shuddered as a particularly vivid memory of Granny's "little chat" with her resurfaced. Then she recalled the panicked stories from the CMC the night before about "evil skinny ghost ponies" and shuddered more. What if it hadn't just been overactive imaginations like she'd supposed.....

Rainbow Dash's head surfaced from the bucket of fudge. "Did ya hafta tell us about that thing with your brother, AJ?" She complained. She stuck her head back into the bucket, muffling her voice. "Doggone it, now I'll never be able to look at that hot red flank again without seeing--- uh, did I say that out loud?"

Applejack paused in mid swig and shot the pegasus a suspicious look. "Whut was that?"

"Nuthin,' " the fudge bucket muttered.

Applejack gave her the stinkeye. "Hmph. Shoulda known you weren't just snitchin' apples and takin' naps in my trees all this time," she said. "You been gogglin' at my brother--"

Rainbow Dash pulled her head back out and licked chocolate off her face. "Aw, c'mon, AJ, can you blame me? With those broad shoulders and those thick, rippling muscles and that tight firm plot you just wanna reach out and---" the grinning pegasus made grabbing motions with her hooves.

"ARRRGH!" The orange earthpony slugged back the bottle.

"Oh. Sorry AJ."

"Oh yeah. She's hetero," Pinkamena said, eyeing Rainbow Dash. Rainbow Dash's burning face disappeared back into the hot fudge container. There was strained laughter all around.

"Girls, could we please focus on the situation?" Twilight said, fanning her flushed face.

"Um, could we go back over that part about "rippling muscles" first, maybe?" A meek little voice said. Fluttershy had an abnormally wide smile as she tapped her hooves together."Hee...."

"I-- no!" Twilight snapped. "We are under some sort of ATTACK, here! Horrible, sick, twisted things keep happening to everyone... and then the next minute un-happen. Only to start all over again...." she shook her head. "What could be causing this? Who? Why?"

Pinkamena surfaced in the middle of the Jacuzzi. "That's why I got you all here together," she said.

Twilight frowned. "You didn't get us here, Pinky, we all came here together by accident."

"Yeah, except I sorta retroactively gave you all special coupons," Pinkie said. She held up a now-soggy strip of paper.

"Special coupons? What kind of special coupons?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"The kind with a posthypnotic subliminal suggestion for you to come here and only here when everything went crazy this week." Pinkamena shrugged. Twilight and the others stared at the wet paper clinging to Pinkie Pie's hoof. The ink on it was starting to run, but it still had a very odd, blurry, fuzzy-hard-to-focus effect.... "I borrowed a few sheets of hypnotic paper from Doctor Whooves and hitched a ride with him to about eight days ago, then made the coupons and dropped them in your mailboxes." she dropped her hoof back in the water. "When narrative causality is shot to heck, it's amazing what you can get away with offscreen," she deadpanned.

"A-and how do we know it's safe here?" Fluttershy suddenly quavered. The others looked VERY uneasy.

"Before I jumped in the Jacuzzi I buried copies of Twain's 'Rules for Writing' and a bunch of English grammar textbooks around the outside of the Spa," Pinkamena said. "They'll repel the Enemy like salt on a slug."

"So you do know what is happening," Twilight said. "So what is it? Is it Discord?"

Pinkamena snorted. "Puh-leeze. You see any chocolate rain or tapdancing buffalos?"

"She's right," Rarity sniffled. "Discord was a brute, but... I think this sort of cruelty is beyond even him."

"And it seems to be getting worse," Twilight added. "The non-events keep getting more horrible with each occurrence. And lasting longer... and more ponies remembering." She looked panicked. "What if it's spreading? What if it gets all the way to Canterlot-- and the Princesses?"

"It probably already has," Pinkamena said. "If I don't miss my guess...."

"An'.... y'know somefin?"

"Wha."

"I STILL fink da nighshalasferfr."

"Whuzzat??" Luna looked over her soup-bowl sized cocktail at the mirrored Nightmare Moon.

"I shaid. Da Nigh'. shoul LASHT. FEREVER."

"OH." There was a pause. "But dunnit?"

"Huh?"

"Yeah. Da worl' is ROUND, remember?" Luna risked a tumble off her barstool and gestured clumsily with her hooves, tracing a globe in the air. "Sho... sho wennit's DAY on ONE side, itsh always night onna udder. Jush goes aroun anna roun....Da Nigh DOES lash forever."

Nightmare Moon blinked owlishly. "Y...yeah. HAH! You're RIGHT! Sho TAKE THAT, Shelesshia! IIiii....WIN!!" She threw her spectral hooves up in the air in victory. And promptly fell backwards off her seat. There was a painfully loud crash; Nightmare Moon's empty helmet briefly bounced back into view, then dropped out of sight with a clang. "Ow."

".... I'm awlright...."

"'Ey Nighty."

"Wah?"

"You forget about my sishter's wingwong yet?"

"...Ah, DAMMIT!"

Luna cackled and took a sip of her margarita.

"Goahedden laff," Nightmare Moon growled. "You got more problemz than I do." A hoof appeared and pointed behind Luna.

Luna turned and stared. There now seemed to be a dozen other Lunas sitting about, explicitly male, female, or.... other... and seemed to be engaged in a variety of ...revolting acts, right in public. With colts, fillies, various members of the Elements of harmony, even with badly distorted versions of her own sister. Luna felt her gut lurch and turned back to the mirror. "Well don't get to high an mighty, Nitey nite," Luna said. "Look again. You gotcher own problems."

Nightmare Moon, sans helmet, sat up and looked drunkenly behind her into the mirror version of the tavern. True to form, there were several Nightmare Moons all about, doing various disgusting things with various disgusting things. Nightmare Moon gagged. "Ohmyguh-- is that a *changeling??*" she boggled.

Luna lay her head down on the bar and wept. "There'z nod enuff booze inna world, iz there..."

Pinkamena shook her head. "Before we go any further, you have to understand something. I'm not Pinkie Pie. well, not your Pinkie Pie. Or, at least not the side of her you know---" she shook her head again. "Forget that, just take it I'm.... Pinkamena. And I know what's going on, I've seen it from the inside AND the outside before, and trust me, I'm the only one that can help you."

"So what IS this "Enemy?" Rarity asked.

"Can't tell you right now..... narrative causality," she said, holding a hoof to her lips. "We need the narrative suspense to work in our favor. But I do know where to find them, where to go next."

"Alright then,so we know where he is?" Rainbow Dash said, getting to her feet and jumping off the massage table. She gave Hans a peck on the cheek. "Thanks, Big Guy, you're a peach. Alright, let's go kick some evil BUTT!"

"Alright.... Pinkamina... where do we go next?"

"Think about it , Twilight. Where's the center of EVERYTHING in Equestria? Where all the power is, where all the important stories start out, where the two biggest Deus Ex Machinas hang out...?"

The other ponies gasped. "Canterlot Castle!"

"Well duh," Pinkie said. "C'mon, we gotta train to catch!" With that she jumped out of the hot tub and galloped for the door, trailing water behind her. The others scrambled to their hooves and, with much splashing and shouting, leapt from the jacuzzi and galloped after her.

Chapter 7

The Ponyville Express pulled into the station with a hiss of steam. Before she'd even come to a full halt, the Mane 6 piled out of the cars in a panicked heap. They were led by a very grim-looking Pinkie Pie with a mane as sleek and straight as a razor's edge. She leapt to her hooves. "Alright, we're here," she said. "Wasn't quite counting on that one car being filled with axe-murdering zombie cannibal ponies, but--- we made it!"

"So let the sunshine in, face it with a grin..." Fluttershy and Rarity sang in a duet in high, quavery voices. They were lying on their backs staring into space, their pupils tiny pinpricks. Applejack doused them by knocking over a handy water cooler.

Twilight shook out her mane. "Okay, Pinkamena, what's next?"

"We're in the home stretch, Twilight. All we gotta do is get from here to the lair." Pinkamena pointed a hoof at Canterlot Castle. "And there's only one place it could be. We have to get to the Princess' throne room!"

The others gaped at her. "Why would it be there?" Applejack demanded.

Pinkamena rolled her eyes. "Because they have SERIOUS Mommy Issues," she said. "And who's the biggest Mother Figure in all of Canterlot?"

"Uh, right," Twilight said. "Point made... I think."

"Okay, we're gonna make a straight run for it," Pinkamena said. "Everybody, stay together, and no matter what happens, no matter what you hear or see or even FEEL, don't stop running. Okay, everybody follow me!" She took off at a dead gallop.

And after a few seconds, came galloping back. "I said, follow ME," she repeated. She stamped her hoof in exasperation.

"Uhh, sugarcube, the castle's that way," Applejack pointed to the left.

"It doesn't matter," Pinkamena said. "These guys don't have any sense of size, scale, distance, proportion, or direction. Nothing's going to be where it's supposed to be in relation to anything else anyway, so we might as well just pick a direction and GO, now COME ON!" She turned and galloped off again. The others shrugged to each other and galloped off in pursuit. Soon they were right behind the pink party pony, who was inexplicably galloping through the twists and turns and alleyways of Canterlot City in a perfectly straight line. It took the others a moment to realize what was wrong, but they soon were staring in shock all around them. "How--?" Twilight started to ask.

"When I told you it was a straight run, I wasn't kidding, now come on!"

The girls began galloping at breakneck speed. As they ran, they passed through an ever-changing panorama of horrors. The twisting streets of Canterlot grew dark and filthy around them; they saw shadowy figures with shining knives in their mouths lurking down back alleys. Signs sprang up for nudie shows, topless bars, strip clubs... wait, what? "But how could anyone start a business in Equestria built around that?" a baffled Twilight yelled as they ran. "We don't usually wear clothes anyway! It doesn't make any sense!"

"They're not thinking with their BRAINS when they make up this stuff!" Pinkamena yelled back. "Keep running!"

They passed dozens of homeless ponies, orphans, the sick, the maimed, the dying, the dead. Worse it was faces they knew, appearing over and over again. Rainbow Dash swore she saw dozens of Scootaloos--- Scootaloo slowly starving to death; Scootaloo lying under a tattered blanket, freezing in the snow; Scootaloo with her wings broken, her face beaten black and blue.... she nearly broke rank with the others again and again, the worst ones were when she saw silhouettes of Scootaloo through curtained windows and heard her screaming "no mommy, no daddy, no Rainbow Dash, please don't hurt me again---!!!"

"Don't listen!" Pinkamena shouted. "You can't save her, she's not real, if you stop you'll be trapped with her and the real Scootaloo will be shafted, keep running!"

They galloped on through their enemy's sick imaginings. They ran through a vast chamber filled with translucent Changeling cocoons; they saw their neighbors, their friends, themselves, dangling from the ceiling, slowly being drained of life, all their happy memories were a delusion, what was the point, nothing mattered--- "Keep running!"

They passed ritual killers, cannibals, rapists, depraved cultists, all ponies, they saw ponies making sacrifices to a Shoggoth, they passed through a factory of hideous machines where blank flanked colts and fillies were being ground up into rainbow pigments...

They ran on. They tripped over small, fluffy, pony-like creatures that had been beaten and brutalized and left to starve in the streets who cried out in babylike voices as they slowly succumbed to their injuries or hunger, begging to know why.... Fluttershy's heart nearly shattered... "Keep running or they'll be this way forever! KEEP RUNNING!"

They galloped through a cluster of Rarities and SweetieBelles... Rarity wailed at what she saw. The filthiness, the vileness--- she nearly fell to her knees and gave up when she realized that most of the copies of her little sister-- her sweet little sister!-- were half-smothered in their own dung---- Applejack had to literally bite her on the flank to get her out of her shock and keep her moving---

Twilight gagged as she passed ponies doing every possible depraved thing. She saw the Apple clan killing animals and people and each other and devouring the flesh.... Celestia, or something like her, beheading ponies in a town square... then Luna, the roles reversed, beheading Celestia......she saw a tiny black filly being roasted alive in an oven, another one being torn apart by a griffon, a third dying impaled by a spike and she somehow knew that they were all supposed to be her daughter, Twilight's own daughter she'd never had, being sadistically butchered, just because their enemy disliked her.... This creature doing this hated them all more than anything in the universe, it HAD to in order to even imagine these things...

The dioramas they passed through changed in tone. Now things began to happen to them personally. It was pure fortune that Rainbow Dash had chosen to gallop with the others; in the space of three blocks her wings were retroactively broken, crushed, burnt off, sliced off, plucked, clipped, cursed with spells even Celestia could not break.... she staggered from remembered pain, but ran on. Rarity became orphaned, hideously scarred, a former prostitute, a rape victim, a serial killer--- she swooned at the false memories, but kept her feet. Twilight "relived" the memory of her horn rotting off, growing wings, having them ripped off again, being tortured into insanity; Applejack remembered her parents dying in a dozen different ways, saw her sister become a zombie, became a zombie herself, felt the Thin Man rake his fingers through her mane, burst into flame as Sweet Apple Acres was blasted to ash by a raging dragon--- she screamed, the flames went out, she ran on.... Fluttershy became a murder victim, became an angel of Death, was infected by a Xenomorph, watched all her friends die, went screaming insane, sprouted a dog collar and some other far more shocking accoutrements, turned into a human girl suffering delusions in an insane asylum.....

Whatever transformations or revised pasts Pinkamena suffered, she said nothing. She just put her head down, set her lips in a grim line, and kept running.

They were in the castle proper now. The guards were still present but they were no obstacle, they were far too busy as apparently they had apparently all turned gay. Or were running for their lives and virtue from various incarnations of Celestia, Luna, and the Mane Six. Or were lining up to violate them while they were in stocks, then behead them....

Then all of the mane six became immortal, watched all their loved ones die, committed suicide, lived forever, grew old and died. In that order. Except for Twilight who became an alicorn, couldn't cope with being immortal and killed herself. And then all the ponies in the world died. And Equestria exploded. Twice.

---and they staggered through the huge double doors and slammed them shut. Applejack and Rainbow Dash shoved various bits of furniture up against the doors and ran some halberds off a wall display through the handles while the others lay on the floor, gasping for breath. The throne room was empty... save for an enormous circus cannon sitting in the middle of the floor. It dominated the room, and was strangely enough surrounded by banana peels.

Pinkamena got to her hooves first. "Come on, let's do this," she said. "Before he comes up with any new ideas... as unlikely as that is." She trotted around behind the throne.

The others joined her, bedraggled and leaning on each other for support. Exhaustion and shock had passed and a slow rage was beginning to smolder in all of them. They watched as Pinkamena pulled a long strip of paper from some unseen pocket and began writing on it. "What's that?" Applejack asked.

"A plot coupon," Pinkamena said. She slapped the paper on the marble floor behind the throne. The others read the writing, done in purple crayon:

Princess Celestia's Basement

"Uh, Pinkie--- Pinkamena," Twilight said. "Canterlot castle has a dungeon, and a wine cellar, and some storage tunnels... but it doesn't have a basement."

"It does now," Pinkamena said. She hooked her hoof through a brass ring that Twilight would have sworn wasn't there a moment ago and pulled up. A section of the floor swung up; underneath it were a set of surprisingly mundane-looking stairs, leading down. Twilight pointed with a hoof. "since when has that been there??" she yelped.

Pinkamena looked at her with half-lidded eyes. "Since our new pain-in-the-butt moved in here," she said. "Mommy Issues, remember? Only place they can seem to live is in Mommy's Basement. It just happens by default wherever they go. If there isn't a Mommy's Basement, it just appears with them--- so long as there's a big enough Mommy Figure to live over top of it,."

"Well, everybody, this is it," Pinkamena said. "try not to chuck your waffle when you see it." She started down the steps. Hesitantly, the others followed.

Chapter 8

"Okay, before this goes anywhere, let me clarify three points," Discord said.

"One: I've never killed anypony.

"Two: I've never turned anypony to stone.

"And most importantly three: I have never, ever, under any circumstances, given any mare a weiner."

All of the above was delivered as calmly as Discord could manage to a very angry unicorn stallion who was glaring at him and wielding a very, very large sledgehammer in his teeth. Shining Armor was livid, it was clear enough, and if Discord didn't get him to calm down and see things rationally (oh, the irony simply burned) there was one very fossilized draconequus looking at a dismal future in a gravel bed.

"Aaa yooo egpech me oo 'eweev---" Shining Armor said. He spat the handle of the sledgehammer out and tried again. "And you expect me to believe a word you say?" He challenged as the head of the sledgehammer thumped to the ground. "You ruined our honeymoon, You lying, deceiving---"

"---Petrified draconequus?" Discord interrupted with a psychic snort. "Think, unicorn; use that noggin of yours for something besides a base for your horn. If I was really powerful enough to be responsible for the ruination going on around us, do you think I'd be sitting here, still trapped in stone?"

Shining Armor paused. Discord had a point. An annoying point, as Shining Armor had been hoping to take the frustration of the past few days out on the draconequus. His honeymoon had NOT been going well. Any time he and Cadence had tried to be... intimate... or even just cuddle and be romantic.... something absolutely horrific had happened. His new bride turning into a Changeling in mid-kiss (and seeing her get brained with a flower pot by his own sister) had just been the first of it. They'd been forced to witness, or even participate in, dozens of absolutely appalling things...only to have normalcy return at the next moment.

This last bout, oh that had just been too much.

"And.... what was that, ruined your honeymoon? Ah yes, you must be the couple who got married on the grounds last week!" Discord said, sounding pleased. "Well, congratulations! It was some party. Well, what I could see of it." the statue grumped. "You'd think someone would at least turn me round once in a while so I could get a different view....."

Shining Armor scowled. "You.... like weddings?"

"Are you joking? Do you know of any ceremony anywhere in the world with a greater aptitude for drawing chaos to itself? Who do you think invented wedding planners? Plus there's cake. I like cake."

"You... invented... wedding planners?" Shining Armor boggled. But he began mentally replaying the mayhem and anarchy that had overtaken his life in the weeks leading up to the ceremony, it actually started to make sense....

"Wedding rehearsals were my idea," Discord said smugly. "Twice the chaos for half the price."

Shining Armor slumped to the ground.

"Been a rough few days, has it?" Discord sympathized. "I'm guessing the, ah, connubial bliss has been repeatedly postponed due to circumstances."

"Who told you that?" Shining Armor demanded, defensive.

"Wild guess," Discord said drily. "that and you look pent up fit to burst." Shining armor growled something and began pacing back and forth. "Well it was hardly a difficult guess," Discord continued. "Reality is coming apart at the seams out there." He referred to the shifting dystopia-scape lying just outside the radiant dome Shining Armor had erected over the hedge maze. "And some of the things I've seen.... well, whoever is doing this has a distinct affinity for soiling anything pure, good, loving or intimate."

"So, just out of boredom--- what event exactly sent you raging into my labyrinth with a sledgehammer in your teeth?"

Shining Armor's head whipped around. He looked at the draconequus, frowning in confusion. "But you said you knew---"

"Wait, what? Oh, the weiner thing.... ahem. When you came out here I assumed you were here because you'd heard what happened to Princess Celestia. Funny thing, she assumed it was my fault as well--- oh wait. ..... Oh please do not tell me that the blushing bride...."

Shining Armor nodded glumly. "It looked like things had calmed down. Had the wine out, the candles, silk bedsheets, everything--- then she comes trotting out of the bathroom talking about how she was going to 'make me an alicorn'---"

"Sounds dirty," the draconequus said. "that's promising...."

Shining Armor glared, but continued. "...And we look down, and she has this... enormous..." he choked. "She screamed. I screamed...." he paused. "It... disappeared a couple of minutes later, but the damage was done....

"What the HELL is up with the person doing this and putting a beef log on mares?" Discord demanded of noone in particular.

"We double-teleported to Princess Celestia. She and Cadence are hiding in the library right now---" the stalwart stallion's lower lip quivered. "Poor Cadence is crying her eyes out and won't stop.... I had to do something...."

Something that sounded suspiciously like "aawwww" came from the draconequus.

"And this after the Changelings invaded during the wedding--"

"So that's what that was," Discord said. "I was going to mention to Celestia that the gardens seemed to have a rather serious bug problem.... I understand the elements of Harmony saved the day..."

For the first time in ages, Shining Armor smiled. "Actually, that was us."

"Oh?"

" I was helpless. Drained by Queen Chrysalis' magic. But Cadence boosted my shield spell--"

"Ahh, with the power of love," Discord said. "That's right. I should have recognized it. Too many pink and peach overtones to be the usual Element o' Harmony Beam Spam. That's some powerful love your little lady has for you.."

"Yeah, she---" Shining Armor started to say more then mentally shook himself. "Oh, don't think I'll fall for THAT, Discord. Trying to pretend to be sympathetic...."

"Believe it or not I AM sympathetic, my pointy-headed paladin. What makes you think that a being of chaos has no appreciation for love? What do you think love is but sweet, sweet Chaos with a delicious candy coating?" Discord paused. "Not all chaos is bad, you know. You ponies could at least learn to appreciate that. New marriages, new families, new lives, new loves, new foals, all heralds of chaos, of lives thrown completely out of order, and ponies welcome them. Joyfully, even. You ponies with your regimented weather and seasons and sunrises, you've forgotten that sometimes the best things in life aren't planned, and sometimes joy comes with the greatest of changes."

"You're awfully philosophical," Shining Armor noted.

"I'm a statue. When you're not going anywhere, your hobbies are limited to lots of deep thinking and gathering moss. Not necessarily in that order."

"As entertaining as this conversation is, it's not getting me anywhere." Shining Armor got to his feet. "My nation, my family, my friends, my marriage is under attack by something unspeakable.. they hurt us. They hurt Cadence. I have to do something."

"Never fear, my lad," Discord said. "Your sister and her compatriots are already underway to set things aright. And..... ah yes, for once they are NOT being led by Twilight. I can tell by the 'taste'....A fortunate thing, as Twilight's not quite up to the task."

"Twilight can handle herself," Shining Armor said.

"Yes, but she can't handle THIS," Discord said. "This is something that even sends draconequi into hiding. No, for this you need someone who's been broken by the fourth wall."

Shining Armor paused. "Taste?"

"Closest metaphor," Discord said. "Sort of like burnt cotton candy... with a hint of ginger. And they should be coming by this way..... riiiiiight about--"

There was a rumbling noise. Out of nowhere, a herd of a half dozen ponies, led by one Pinkamena, came thundering down the hedge-lined path. They knocked down the hapless captain of the guard and trampled right over him. "Keep running!" the one in lead yelled. They galloped on, disappearing around a bend in the maze, leaving a battered, behoofprinted Shining Armor lying in the dirt. "There it goes----The four-thirty Deus Ex Machina, right on schedule," Discord said.

Shining Armor sat up shakily. He had been wearing his armor for the confrontation with Discord, so the mayhem inflicted on him had been more comical than injurious. Still, he was feeling pretty battered, and not just by dainty feminine hooves. He pointed a horrified hoof after the disappearing dustcloud. "What in Celestia's name was THAT??"

"Your sister and her friends," Discord said drily.

"But-- I saw---- zombie bones--- and blood and--- there were butcher knives with--a cloak made of pony skins--clown shoes-- and the ball gags? what--- "

"They're getting close. The enemy is basically throwing everything he has at them, a clearance sale on all his sick, fetid little issues. Like a party cannon barrage with rotting garbage."

"and did some of them have...."

"Whoever this is, he's got a real obsession with Futa," Discord said in disgust. "Problems with his winky, I'd hazard a guess."

"And that SMELL..."

"Shallow breaths. It helps." For lack of any other option, Shining Armor took his advice. "Now, kiddies, I'd recommend retreating back to the Princess's library and hunkering down till this is over. Quite frankly there's nothing else you can do, and by the time there is it will probably be all over." Shining Armor hated to admit it, but the chaos entity was probably right. You couldn't stab this sort of problem in the face with a sword or even blast it with a magic shield. And if it had Discord, of all creatures, hiding in his own skin.... He would be of more use protecting Celestia. And Cadence.

Besides. He was already going to have trouble sleeping; he really didn't want to catch up and see his baby sister looking like--- that. He turned to gallop back to the castle and the (probable) safety. As he was about to leave he paused. "By the way.... don't they clean the statues regularly?"

"They do."

"Then what's all that white stuff on your face...?"

"Pro tip: yelling "BOOGA BOOGA" at pigeons when they're perched on you?...Bad idea."

Epilogue

All over Equestria, stories like stardust fell....

The back stacks of the Canterlot archives were close and dark, only lit by a few firefly lamps at this late hour. Princess Cadence had made something of a sheltered nest back in the far corners, some few blankets and pillows and a basket of food from the kitchens intended for a garden picnic, all snatched in haste in their flight from the effects of the troll-fic. The little bivouac was surrounded on all sides by stacks of books, classic novels and volumes on literature and effective writing. Shining Armor had to smile to himself as he crept around the end of the bookshelves; the resemblance of his bride's sanctuary to one of Twily's foalhood 'book forts' was too endearing.

He stepped out where he could be seen; the lamplight glimmering off his armor. "Hey," he said.

She looked up, apprehension in her eyes.... then relaxed visibly once she saw who he was. She had faith that there were no surprises here; the library had remained as steady and unwavering as the root of a mountain, even when the worst mayhem was right outside the doors. "hey, yourself," she said, pushing aside a few stacks so he could creep inside with her. he did so, shucking his armor and leaving it outside. He nestled down beside her.

"Is it all clear out there...?" Cadence asked timidly.

Shining nodded. "They found the Trollfic," he said. "I don't know what they did to it, but whatever's left won't be coming back for a long time. Something about galactic orbit." His eyes were downcast. "This has not.." he sighed "...not exactly been the honeymoon I'd hoped to give you." He paused. "Or the wedding. Or the engagement--- I wanted to make everything perfect for you, and---"

Cadence pressed a hoof against his lips and shushed him. "You're here. You already did," she said, nuzzling him.

He nuzzled her back. "I can't help wondering what else is going to happen to us," he said. "Our marriage is off to one hell of a rocky start..."

Cadence chuckled. "Well, look at it this way. After all of this, any marriage problems we have is going to seem like small potatoes." The two of them laughed. She nuzzled up under his chin. "Now, Mr. Shining Armor, your poor bride has had a very, very scary day, and she needs..."

"A little TLC?" Shining said, amused.

"Oh lots and lots of TLC," Cadence said. She started undoing the button of his dress collar with her teeth. "And... stuff like that..."

"Oh really..."

"Mmm hmmm...."

Tender sounds murmured in the aisles. Out in the vaulted chambers of the library, the head librarian smiled to herself, ears flicking briefly in the direction of the back stacks. She hung a sign on the library doors: "CLOSED FOR REMODELING: do not enter."

.... And left, locking the double doors firmly behind her.

All over Equestria, stories like stardust fell....

Scootaloo started out of her drowse as something landed with a thump on her little cloud, making it surge like a waterbed under her sleeping bag. She looked up from her shooting-star campfire to see Rainbow Dash standing there. "Hey, squirt," she said.

The smile that lit up the filly's face could have lit up the sun. "Rainbow Dash!" she said, lifting herself up on her forehooves. "What are you doing here?"

Dash shrugged and tried to look indifferent. "Hey, was just passin' by, thought I'd drop in and see how my number one fan is doing," she said. She scuffed a hoof in the cloud. "So... um.... is everything okay?"

Scootaloo looked puzzled. "Um... yeah?"

Dash wouldn't look her in the eye. "Everything okay at home?.... like.... with your parents and stuff?"

"Uh yeah," Scootaloo said, her eyebrow inching higher. She pointed a hoof over the side of the could. "That's our house, down below," she said, pointing down at a cheery little cottage below. The back door opened and a pegasus stallion stepped out in the warm rectangle of light. He looked up and waved at the filly. Scootaloo waved back. Seemingly satisfied all was well, he turned around and went back inside, closing the door behind him. "That was my dad," Scootaloo said unnecessarily. "Do you wanna see him and mom for something...?"

"Oh, uh, naw," Rainbow Dash said, relief apparent in her voice. She seemed to be searching for something to say. "You haven't... been sick lately have you? Or had to go to the hospital for... stuff...."

"Rainbow Dash, you're weirding me out," Scootaloo said.

"So that's a no--?"

"No, I haven't been sick or gone to the hospital or anything," Scootaloo said. She thought it over for a second. "Well, not since that thing with the Cutie Mark Crusaders and the trebuchet... but why are you asking all these weird questions?"

"No reason, no reason," Rainbow Dash said hastily. "It's just that.... I've been thinking a lot, and I realized that... you're my number one fan, and we've never, you know, got to know each other or.... yknow.... And I was passing by and saw you were cloud-camping, and figured we could...." she scratched the back of her head with one hoof, staring into space. "You know. Just hang out tonight around the campfire..." She looked at Scootaloo and gave a little uncertain half-smile. "If you want to, y'know---"

Scootaloo's grin almost stretched from ear to ear. "You mean you wanna camp out? Here? With me??" At Dash's nod, the excited filly leaned dangerously over the edge of the cloud. "HEY MOM!!" she bellowed in a voice loud enough to blow back Rainbow Dash's mane. One of the windows in the house below opened and a mare leaned out. "What is it, Scootie?"

"IS IT ALL RIGHT IF RAINBOW DASH CAMPS OUT WITH ME?" Scootaloo's yell set dogs barking in the neighborhood below. Dash leaned over the side so Scootaloo's mother could see her better and waved awkwardly.

"What? Oh, that's fine! You two have fun tonight," the mare yelled up to them. "Love you..."

"LOVE YOU TOO MOM!" the mare withdrew and the window closed. Scootaloo reached into her pup tent and pulled out a paper bag, all but bouncing with glee."So whaddya wanna do? Sing songs? Tell ghost stories?" Scootaloo asked. "I got stuff for smores," she said, pulling a bag out of the pup tent, desperately eager to please. "well... the shooting stars aren't hot enough to toast marshmallows-- but if you stick 'em together with peanut butter it works okay !..."

"Hey, no need to get all keyed up," Dash said. "I'm not going anywhere. But for now...." She folded her legs and lay down on the cloud next to the campfire. "I'd really like it if for a while we could just... get to know each other, and... y'know.."

"just.... talk."

All over Equestria, stories like stardust fell....

Fluttershy locked the door of her cottage firmly behind her. It had been a harrowing day for anypony, much less the meek animal lover. The terrible, heartbreaking things she'd seen... how could anyone live with so much hopelessness in their heart? All she wanted to do was curl up with Angel Bunny and a big cup of cocoa and forget this awful day had ever happened.

Something in the house whimpered.

Fluttershy spun on her hooves, startled. She listened for a second, not daring to breathe... nothing. Had she imagined it?

She heard it again. It seemed to be coming from under the couch. Angel was over by the sofa, peering underneath with a peculiar expression. He motioned for Fluttershy to come and see.

Fluttershy got down and crawled up to the sofa, and looked underneath. It was little, and yellow, with a pink mane, and tiny feathery wings, and so outrageously fluffy she could barely make out its shape. It stared back at her with enormous blue eyes rimmed with tears.

"N-no hurt Fluffyshy..." it whimpered. "Please no hurt..."

Fluttershy's memory flew back to the terrible events of the day. The desperate run for the castle; running past all those poor suffering ponies and animals; the alleyway filled with small, raggedy fluffball creatures like this one, freezing and bleeding and starving and crying out in misery...

It was one of them. One of the Troll's creations.... and judging by how the other characters under the Troll's power had treated them, not made out of affection or kindness.Poor innocent creatures created solely so their maker could sate his sadism on them....

Fluttershy's heart wrenched with pity. She reached under the sofa with one hoof and beckoned gently. "Come on, it's okay," she crooned. Slowly, fearfully, the strange creature crept out. Fluttershy cradled it in her forelegs. "It's okay, I won't hurt you..."

The yellow and pink Fluffy looked up at her. "No hurt Fwuffyshy?" It asked timorously. "No make Fwuffyshy go away?"

"Of course not," Fluttershy said, cuddling the ball of fluff close. "You can stay with me as long as you want." The tiny creature's stomach rumbled. Fluttershy giggled. "You must be hungry. Would you like something to eat?"

"Skettie wif cheese?" Fluffyshy said hopefully.

Fluttershy blinked and smiled. "Oh, well-- that sounds rather good, actually...."

All across Equestria, stories like stardust fell...

Pinkie Pie snoozed in her bed, a contented smile on her face, half a frosted cupcake in her hoof, her poufy mane like a cloud around her head. All was back to normal... as it ever got with Pinkie Pie at any rate. But let's just say that all was well again, instead.

Across the room, her reflection lay in her own bed staring at her, long, silky-straight mane pooling on the pillow. Once she was confident that Pinkie was genuinely asleep (and not getting ready to play 'Peekaboo' with her again), she got up out of her mirror bed, crossed the mirror room, and left, closing the mirror door behind her. Behind her a proper, unassuming reflection took her place: Pinkie sleeping contentedly.

The moment Pinkamena left the room's reflection, she found herself back in the Between.(1) It was a fine day or night there and the weather was being quite extraordinary(2), But she had no interest in it. She always felt listless after coming back from Ponyville; she loved it and Pinkie both so much it ached... but every time she spent there was a reminder that she was a cast-off, only able to be there a short time; only when things were all wrong, to fix everything and then to go 'home' and be all but forgotten again. And those few who did remember her would soon dismiss her as a bad dream or an odd delusion--- and who could blame them? Who would want to remember somepony who was a herald of Trollficcers and Mary Sues soiling your world.

She walked with her head down, eyes on her hooves.

And bumped headlong into another pony.

"Scuse me, I was just--" then she noticed the moon emblem on the torc in front of her. She looked up in astonishment: yes. It was. It was Princess Luna. The lunar princess smiled down at her.

Pinkamena gawped at her. "What're you doing here?" she yelped. "Ooh, uh, I mean--" she stammered, backing up hastily and averting her eyes.

Luna chuckled. "We know what thou meanest," she said in a surprisingly gentle voice. "Though it should not surprise thee that we are here. We are the Princess of the moon, of Night and of Dreams; twas little effort to learn from Pinkie Pie, and to search and find that our domain was close at hand to thine. After all," she grinned impishly, "what are dreams but another sort of Reflection?"

"What... what can I do for you, your highness?" Pinkamena asked carefully. She looked around her at the bedlam of the Between and had the most peculiar impulse to straighten it up a bit.

"We have learned of thy... connection to one of our subjects," Luna said. "That thou art a...a shucked-off possibility, in a manner of speaking. an outcast of our world, born of dark and evil futures that other beings beyond here would afflict upon us."

"That's a fair summary," Pinkamena muttered, digging the tip of her hoof in the ground.

Luna frowned. "And that thy dark genesis makes the an outcast of our world, unable to stay in it.That you lurk here, just outside, behind the reflections of our mirrors, watching all that goes on." She lowered her head, bringing her face close to Pinkamena's. "Only able to return if the fabric of our world is torn asunder."

Pinkamena hunkered down, cringing. This is it, she thought. This is where she banishes me and tells me never to come near the Mirror-side ever again, because my grimdark self has no place in her wonderful world...

"And so we sought thee out," Luna said gently, "To let thee know:

"Thou art forever welcome in my domain."

Pinkamena's eyes popped wide. "What?"

"Thou hast faithfully guarded our realm from terrible evils, my little pony," Luna said. "E'en though thou art cruelly banished from it. E'en though aiding the Trollfic might even have afforded thee a way to remain in Equestria for good, by abolishing what banished thee."

"I did it for love," Pinkamena said, shaking her head. "That's all. I'm not noble. Pinkie is the only family I have, the only real friend. As ditzy as she is, I wouldn't see her living in a hurtful world for anything."

Luna nuzzled her. "All the more reason to welcome thee, little Pinkamena," she said. Her horn glowed, and a door opened behind her. A meandering pathway through rolling hills under a dreamlit sky could be seen beyond it. "Walk freely with me in the Realm of Dreams whenever thou dost choose, and know that thou hast come home."

Tears welled in Pinkamena's eyes. For the first time, possibly in her life, joy flooded her face. She leapt forward, embracing the lunar princess-- who started in surprise, then smiled.

They walked together through the open doorway; Pinkamena silently noted that the Dreamworld wasn't much different from the Between.(3) I could live here quite comfortably, she thought.

"There are a few things thou mightest lend us a hoof with, perchance," Luna mentioned casually.

"Oh? What sort of things?"

"I traverse my realm, in and out of the dreams of other ponies," Luna said. "Helping soothe their sleep, refresh their spirits, banish their ill dreams and face their fears. Would that I had another pony who would help the colts and fillies of our land by banishing their nightmares and sweetening their dreams..." she trailed off, eyeing Pinkamena.

"That sounds like a job offer," Pinkamena grinned. "If so I accept. Anything on the agenda tonight, your Highness?"

"Well, twould seem that Pinkie Pie did fall into a magical pool some time ago... and somehow, after being magically banished, fourscore duplicates of her did find their way into my realm," the Princess said. "They do need a stern hoof to keep them in line. Ponies in Equestria do not need their dreams forever invaded by herds of Pinkies."

"The magic mirror pool? Funny, they should've ended up in the Between..."

"Strewth. Tis in the end how I found my way from my realm to thine. Although their directions were most confusing at first. And then there's a certain Nightmare I need an eye kept on. She's currently at the Castle of Dreams, puking into the moat...."

All across Equestria, stories like stardust fell...

Twilight crept quietly down the stairs. She had just finished tucking Spike into his bed... for the first time in years. Despite being only a baby, the little fellow hadn't been spared in the least by the Troll; he had needed hours of coddling and childhood comforts just to calm him down. Thankfully, some warm milk, agate cookies, and his favorite bedtime story from when he was just a hatchling (The Geologist's Illustrated Guide to Minerals and Gemstones) had finally done the trick. He was sound asleep, and hopefully would have completely forgotten everything that had happened by morning.

Twilight didn't want to forget.

She was sitting up late, down in the library, writing the day's events down in her journal. She didn't want to forget; not the Trollfic, not the things it had done, not the way it had been finally defeated... not the strange Pinkie-not-Pinkie to whom they owed their survival. Maybe she'd forget it all in the morning. Maybe the record she was writing down would be gone; the pages blank, the ink back in the bottle. But she would at least try.

Pinkamena deserved at least that much.

Twilight lit another candle, set her tea pot to boil, pulled out a fresh quill and started to write.

Unknown to her, unobserved, under the table where she wrote, a tiny fleck of something festered and grew. a miniscule gobbet of the Trollfic she had unconsciously scraped off her back hoof, now nestled in the dark cracks of the library floor. It slowly swelled and grew, feeding off o th sp oh god it burns ak gll

th p a 2346 4 &^% @#$... .. . ..

...... . ... .

Twilight carefully emptied the last of the pot of boiling water on the greasy pea-sized gobbet as it quivered in agony. Then, satisfied that the last of it had been forced up out of the crack in the floor by the blistering hot water, she picked up her annotated edition of Diana Hackney's Rules for Writers and brought it down on the exposed glob with all the force she could muster.

The animate blob of godawful writing popped like a cyst.

There was a flash of light and a loud report. Twilight lifted the book. There was nothing left but a charred spot on the floor the size of a dime; the book itself was unharmed. She brushed the soot off the cover with an air of satisfaction.

"Nah. I don't think so," she said to noone in particular, and went back to her writing.

Chapter 1

It took less than a week after Cadence and Shining Armor's wedding for Equestria to go completely to hell.

Twilight was busy with her books, as always, when Rarity of all ponies staggered in through the door. The normally fabulous and fastidious pony looked like... well she looked like hell. Her coat was scruffy and unkempt. Her hair was dishevelled--- an unheard-of thing-- and her normally carefully-polished hooves looked chipped and cracked. Twilight could see bags under the unicorn's carefully made-up eyes, and the unicorn wasn't sure but she thought the pony looked thinner, malnourished.

"Oh Twilight, I don't know who to turn to, you MUST help me!" the fashion pony wailed. Before Twilight knew what was happening, the most successful and high-culture pony in Ponyville was all but prostrate at her feet, sobbing out a tale of calamity and woe worthy of Charles Dickens on a cocaine bender.

Twilight repeated what she had just been told. Slowly and carefully, to make sure she hadn't misheard anything.

"Let me get this straight. You couldn't pay your taxes."

Rarity nodded.

"So you bribed the Mayor for more time."

Rarity nodded again, head hanging lower.

"With a SAPPHIRE NECKLACE."

A surprisingly fluttershy-like whimper came out of the white unicorn.

Twilight facehoofed so hard she saw stars. "And it never occurred to you that a SAPPHIRE NECKLACE could probably pay your taxes ten times over?" And, Twilight realized, it never occurred to the Mayor either ..... and it also hadn't occurred to the Mayor that trotting around with a sparkly bribe around your neck was a good way to end a career in politics very quickly. Had the Mayor been eating locoweed or something?

Rarity looked puzzled for a moment. Then she glanced aside and pawed at the floor with one hoof. "Well I..... I was so flustered when she suggested ...... and the way she... I mean how she phrased it, about 'certain favors', it threw me off and..." what she said next had Twilight's jaw on the floor.

"YOU THOUGHT SHE WAS asking to HAVE SEX WITH YOU???"

There was a thump of something falling to the floor. The two ponies glanced over in puzzlement. Over in the corner, Spike was standing on a ladder, a stack of books in his hand half-raised back to the shelf, pupils shrunk to dots, face frozen in a peculiar expression as certain visions involving a white unicorn and a grey mare flickered across his brain. His eye twitched slightly. "I'm.... not sure how I feel about this," he muttered.

"Spike!" Twilight snapped.

"Right, back to work, back to work, shelving books, didn't hear a thing---" Spike hastily stuffed the books on the shelf and scrambled down the ladder, heading for safer territory somewhere else in the library.

When the eavesdropping dragon had clattered out of earshot, Twilight turned her attention back to Rarity. "Let's get back to the point. How on earth did you come to the conclusion that the mayor was a FILLY FOOLER?"

"Well I didn't SAY it, thankfully--"

"Oh EWWW!" the purple unicorn grimaced and made "ick get it off" motions with her hooves. "And she's like, old enough to be your MOTHER! GAH!" Twilight shook herself all over. "It's a good thing you didn't say anything-- if you thought you were in trouble before, imagine if you'd said anything.... Where on EARTH did you get the idea she was--?"

Rarity blinked, suddenly surprised. Her eyes flickered nervously, like an actress who'd suddenly forgotten her lines. "I.... I honestly don't know," she admitted, puzzled. She tapped one porcelain hoof to her chin. "It's... not like she's ever done anything one would construe as... well..." she frowned. "Maybe I--- heard a rumor someplace...?"

Twilight gave her a deadpan look. Rarity's appetite for juicy lowbrow gossip was proving to be a long-term headache. "Okay, moving on. Let's address the main issue here."

"Which is...?" Rarity said, distracted.

"How the hell can you be BROKE?" Twilight spluttered. "You find GEMSTONES with your HORN! You dragged home FOUR WAGONLOADS of them just a few months back! You sold SIX jewel-crusted costumes to 'the Pony of Pop!'I could buy a castle the size of Canterlot with what she spent on those! And that commission by Hoity Toity would have funded the staff for it for a year!" How could even Rarity simply give away so much clothing and jewelry that she was starving-in-the-streets broke?

How could Rarity be behind on taxes anyway?? Rarity did community service every year! Winter Wrap-Up, the Running of the Leaves, decorations for the summer sun celebration... if anything the Mayor probably owed RARITY money.

Another thought struck her. She poked her fashionista friend in one skinny flank. "And why are you going hungry?"

Rarity looked offended. "I told you, it's not as if I had money to spare--"

"You've got to be kidding me! You're a HORSE! You eat GRASS! You eat HAY! You could just walk out in the nearest open field and eaten your fill!"

Rarity gaped at her. "Eating grass like a..."

"Pony?" Twilight deadpanned. "I repeat--- college student. I know about being short on food. Plenty of times when it was a choice between grazing in the courtyard and eating Ramen noodles. Trust me, pick the grass."

The purple unicorn paused and drew a breath. "Anyway.... As if your friends would let you get that far. You've got one friend who's a FARMER and another who's a BAKER. You can't get within hoof's reach of either of them without them trying to fatten you up..." Twilight couldn't help flashing back to her first day in Ponyville; the Apple clan had roped her into a "brunch" that nearly left her an apple-stuffed unicorn. And how could anyone get rib-bone skinny with Pinky Pie's cakes and punch around? "Rarity, we're your friends. Why didn't you say anything? Why didn't you ask for help?" Even Applejack hadn't let her mule-stubborn pride reach THIS point.

Rarity looked away; a silent tear slid down her cheek. "Because... I don't deserve it," she said. "The only reason anyone tolerates me is because I'm generous... if I ever stopped being generous then nobody would ever like me again, because I'm such a vain and shallow creature..."

Twilight just stared at her. She felt herself getting more bewildered with every sentence. Rarity's pain was obviously real, but everything she was saying sounded like she was reading it from a script. An incredibly BAD script. It was a litany of self-loathing and ridiculously disproportionate self-recrimination. It was like something written up by those silly foals at the cafe' who dyed their manes and tails black, wore too much eye liner, and covered their cutie marks with rub-on tattoos of skulls and ankhs.

"Horseapples," she said. "Look, you just-- go get your receipts and your bank records and whatever. We'll go on over and have a talk with the Mayor.... AFTER lunch.....and have her go through the Ponyville records--" and make a few pointed remarks to the Mayor about bribery laws, she added mentally--

"and we'll get this worked out...."

Elsewhere in Ponyville...

The upper room above Sugarcube Corner was strangely dark. Curtains were drawn, all lights extinguished. A bright pink pony with cotton-candy mane and tail sat alone in the center of the floor--- no, check that, a bright pink pony and a small toothless crocodile sat alone in the center of the floor. The pony rhythmically stroked the crocodile's belly with one hoof as she murmured and giggled to herself in a truly disturbing fashion. "Yes, yes, new cupcakes... with a SPECIAL INGREDIENT--- we'll have to invite Rainbow Dash over for THAT..."

Her manic, glaze eyed expression suddenly crumpled like a lump of sugar in warm tea. Her mane drooped. In a trice she went from wild-eyed giggling to hopeless weeping. "--- but she won't come, nobody will come, nobody likes my parties anymore... I'm so tired of trying to be happy all the time..."

Without warning she suddenly became manic again. "Well we'll just have to do something about that, won't we Gummy?" She said, giggling breathily. She picked up the gator and tossed him in the air, catching him again. "Oh yes we'll have funny fun fun games with our friends..." she said in a singsong voice. She spun in a circle in her chair---

--And caught a glimpse of herself in the dresser mirror.

The Pinky in the mirror wasn't quite the same as the one in front of it. Her normally bright pink coat was dull; her mane and tail hung in flat-ironed folds rather than floating about in a cotton candy frizz. The heavy-lidded, surly expression was as far from Pinkie's normal cheerful demeanor, or from her current psychotic mania, as it could possibly get.

The reflection spoke.

"Oh, not THIS again."

There was a shift, a RIPPLE in the air.....

Instantly Pinky's coat dimmed to match the mirror. Her mane and tail deflated like a depressed party balloon, hanging like limp string. The pink party pony turned away from the mirror, the cynical expression in the reflection now her own. "Well, here we go again. Screw it. Might as well get started...." Pinkamena set down Gummy and opened her dresser. In the bottom drawer were all the tools she needed for just such a situation.....

The Cutie Mark Crusaders were in deep trouble. Not that trouble was anything unusual for them, but this time it was on a whole new level. The three fillies were running through the orchards as fast as their tiny legs could carry them. The trees were barely visible in the twilight gloom... which was exceedingly peculiar as it was nearly noon. Not that the three fillies were in any position to appreciate this fact. Applebloom was weeping hysterically; poor Sweetie Belle had wet herself in fear. Scootaloo was darting frantic looks left and right as they ran, terrified that she wouldn't see the monster coming, and just as terrified that she would. Their desperate panting filled the oppressively heavy air as they ran for their lives.

Applebloom skidded to a halt and let out a scream. The other two screeched to a halt next to her, wailing in terror. Mere yards ahead, the monster stood facing them. It was impossible, they had run forever, and yet somehow it had caught up and passed them... and now stood waiting for them.

It was almost like a pony. Almost. It was impossibly tall and thin, taller than even Princess Celestia, nearly all of its height given to its insanely long, gangling legs. It was coal black, save for it's white flank mark--- a circle crossed out with an X--- and its bare white head. It had no tail, no mane, and most horribly of all, no face. It saw its prey and let out a mouthless shriek that drilled their ears from the inside. They hadn't seen where it had come from; it had simply stepped out of nowhere from behind the trees, into their path....

It, in turn, never saw Pinkamena Diane Pie step out of nowhere from behind itself.

The three fillies gaped in surprise as the cotton-candy-pink pony simply appeared from behind the gangling horror. She saw the girls, gave them a little wave and a manic grin, spun around, planted her forehooves on the ground and kicked with her back hooves straight up between the Slender Pony's hind legs.

Despite her panic, a small part of Applebloom was impressed. Pinky had bucked straight and true and had planted both hooves, as Applejack might have put it, right where the Slender Pony's trunk forked. There was a solid, meaty THUMP. The Slender Pony's back legs folded together like jackstraws. It had no eyes, no nose and no mouth, yet somehow its blank visage transformed into a most wondrous expression of surprise . The thin, piercing shriek spiraled upward into octaves too high to hear, and with a falsetto squeak the monster toppled forward like a felled pine.

"Hello, girls," Pinky said cheerfully. " Oooh, give me just a minute---"She produced a rope from nowhere and proceeded to hog-tie the insensate monster with ruthless efficiency. That done, she produced a pink glitter pen and, for reasons none of the fillies could fathom, began drawing crossed-out O's all over the Slender Pony's body and face.

The creature howled and writhed as if the marker were a branding iron. "Oh, SHUT IT," Pinkamena said, giving the thing a kick in the belly as she scribbled away. "It's your own fault for crossing over into a place like this." The shrieks faded to scratchy whimpers. Shortly the creature was decorated from nose to hoof with glittery X's and O's.

Pinky admired her hoofcraft, nodded in satisfaction and put the pen away. She flipped her long straight hair out of her face and trotted over to where the Crusaders stood, rooted to the spot, jaws dangling. "Are you girls all right--"

She didn't have to wait for an answer. They flung themselves at their savior and clung to her like a liferaft. After a few seconds of awkward crying and hysterical babbling and comfort-squeezing, she pushed them back.... Pinky was all for hugs, but they made Pinkamena uncomfortable. "Scootaloo, Sweetie belle, do me a favor, would you?" she handed each of them a cast iron frying pan. "I need to speak to Applebloom for a second." She pointed back at the hogtied creature. "Watch him; if he moves, whack him in the head." The two ponies nodded and stood over the prone monster, skillets at the ready.

Pinkamena looked Applebloom in the eye. "Now Applebloom--"

CLANG!

"--I said IF HE MOVES, girls," Pinkamena said over her shoulder.

"I saw him twitch...." Scootaloo said.

Pinkamena sighed and rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Okay, Applebloom, you don't need to worry anymore. You take Scoot and Sweetie up to your house. Get cleaned up, have some cookies and milk, go to bed. I promise that everything will be fixed in the morning."Applebloom's eyes welled with tears. "But... but the monster...it got Applejack... and Big Macintosh too, it---"

"What are you talking about sweetie? There they are," Pinkamena said, pointing to the farmhouse, now in sight.

There was a shift, a RIPPLE in the air....

Applebloom looked where Pinky was pointing. There, silhouetted in the doorway, was Big Macintosh, calmly chewing a stalk of grass. Applejack was next to him, looking over the farm anxiously, obviously wondering where her little sister had gotten to. Applebloom's grief turned to bewilderment. "But ah saw it--- ah saw it take them an'..."

"Now that's enough," Pinkamena said firmly. "No more talking about it, okay? You've had a horrible day, but that's all over. Just go on up and do as I said."

"What... whut's goin' on?" Applebloom said plaintively. First this horrible monster... and now Pinky was acting so... not-Pinky it made no sense....

Pinkamena felt a tug of sympathy. Children, especially ones who lived in a Sugarbowl like Equestria, just weren't meant to go through this sort of thing. "Some.... bad ponies.... have been making a mess of Ponyville," Pinkamena explained. "That's the best I can tell you right now. But don't you worry, your Auntie Pinky will fix it all up." She patted Applebloom awkwardly on the head.

"Now, don't you think you shouldn't keep your brother and sister waiting?"

Applebloom's tear-streaked face was suddenly wreathed in joy. She bolted for the farmhouse, calling her brother and sister's name. After a couple of final vengeful CLANGS to their nemesis' head, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo dropped their frying pans and bolted after her. Pinkamena sighed in relief. It wouldn't matter if the girls told their horror story to Applejack and Big Macintosh, really... by now the memory was probably already fading. With any luck the whole mess would be healed over as if it never was before the next sunrise.

Pinkamena turned back to her turkey-trussed victim. "With any luck, even if they DO remember, they'll only remember all this as a bad dream," she said to the faceless pony. "But all the same--- you sad sack of web-troll backwash---" she gave the creature a punt someplace tender--- "you traumatized a bunch of little girls for your sick giggles. And that makes Pinky a maaaaad Pony." she took the loose end of the rope binding the Slender Pony and threw it over a low hanging branch. Spitting on her hooves, she began hoisting the Slender Pony up into the air. "And I think.... (tug).... that calls for (tug).... you and me(tug).... to have a little(tug).... PARTY."

She tied off the rope and stepped back. "I don't know about Pinky, but you know what MY favorite part of a party is?" Once again she pulled something from her trademark hammerspace-- a large baseball bat studded with nails. "The Pinata."

Her bubbly grin turned to a malevolent smirk. "Let's find out if you're full of delicious candy."

"Um, so let me get this straight." Twilight stared up at the mound of mint-green horseflesh before her. "Roundabout yesterday, Bon-bon, you realized you had this... compulsion."

Bon-bon, who was standing nearby, pawed one hoof through the dust and nodded.

"A compulsion to... fatten up... Lyra."

Bon-bon's only reaction to this was to turn an even brighter shade of red. "So you... talked Lyra into coming down to Sugarcube corner. And began plying her with sweets... until THIS happened. "Twilight waved a hoof in the general direction of the greenish mound before her. It was, in truth, Lyra; swollen to impossible proportions, and wedged solidly in the front door of Sugarcube Corner, an immobile ball of rolling fat with four tiny feet and a tiny unicorn head just barely sticking out. the mint-green unicorn looked as ashamed and humiliated as it was possible for a pony to look.

"And all... THAT... happened," Twilight went on. "In two HOURS??" She croggled. "This is scientifically and biologically IMPOSSIBLE-- the sheer caloric--- Lyra, why didn't you stop when you saw what was happening?"

Lyra tried to lick the chocolate smears off her own face. "... but the cakes were so tasty...I couldn't help myself!" tears of shame started rolling down her enormous cheeks. Even as grotesque as she was, the sight was one of heartstring tugging pathos.

Bon-bon sympathetically patted her friend with one hoof, "There there, it'll be okay," she said. "Don't worry, you're always beautiful to me..." Her expression changed oddly. She began rubbing her cheek along Lyra's grossly distended belly-folds, a lascivious smirk spread across her face. "In fact, I kind of like you this way..."

Twilight stood there staring. Her expression was indescribable.... almost as indescribable as the one crossing Lyra's face. "What is THIS load of happy horseapples??" she demanded of noone in particular.

From behind Twilight a certain purple and green snarker could be heard to mutter. "Chubby Chaser...."

"SPIKE!!"

Mrs. Cake was standing next to her. "Didn't you know, Dearie?" she asked. "Lyra and Bon-Bon are..." she looked around and whispered, "an item. you know..." Twilight wasn't sure what the hoof gestures Mrs. Cake was making were supposed to mean, but she could guess.

She gawped at the pastry chef, flabbergasted. "Since WHEN?"

Mrs. Cake looked flustered. She hesitated for a moment, seemingly confused, then tried another tack. "Goodness, you led such a sheltered life before coming here, didn't you---"

"A sheltered life? In CANTERLOT?" the sarcasm in Twilight's voice could have etched metal. "I was in COLLEGE, Mrs. Cake, not sealed in a barrel. I've seen a few grad-student parties, and believe me, I've seen things that would curl your mane. I KNOW what you're talking about. but I also know for a fact that Lyra's dating a BOY and I saw Bon-Bon with her HUSBAND and FILLY at the meteor shower party just two weeks ago. What, did everyone decide that Lyra and Bon Bon had to be lesbians because they sit on the same park bench at lunch?"

Mrs. Cake's eyes glazed; she seemed to struggle with assimilating what Twilight had said. "Well, ah, people, ahh, do change, dearie..." she said haltingly.

"oh for crying out---" Twilight closed her eyes. "Never mind. Forget it. Focus, Twilight, focus... Okay, look, I'm going to do some research; this... swelling up... thing has to be some sort of magic effect. maybe Poison Joak got in the cake batter or something-- BON BON, STOP NUZZLING LYRA'S BELLY FAT LIKE THAT. IT LOOKS UNWHOLESOME!-- and once we get Lyra out of your FRONT DOOR, I'm going to find whatever's making everypony in town a CRAZY PERSON and FIX IT!"

Chapter 9

The six bearers of the elements of harmony clattered down the stairs, justice on their foreheads, righteous fury in their eyes, and murder in their little pony hearts. Twilight and Rarity lit up their horns to light the way. It was a long, angular stairwell-- long enough that they had time to notice certain oddities about it. "You know, this doesn't look much like a stairwell you'd find in a castle," Rarity noted.

"No, it doesn't," Fluttershy said, surprised. "You'd think they would be made out of stone. These are wood."

"And painted," Applejack noted. "An' there's wallpaper on the walls." The cowpony looked closer, squinting. "Tulips. Same pattern Granny Smith put up in the farmhouse."

"Yes, and--" Twilight stopped to sniff the air. And put her hoof to her nose. "Pheagh. What is that smell?"

Once Twilight mentioned it, the rest of them noticed it as well. There was a round of tentative sniffs and face-pulling. "Oh, man, it smells like the locker room at Flight Camp," Rainbow Dash said. "You never forget that smell, no matter how hard you try..."

Fluttershy was covering her face with her wing. "Um, sort of," she said. "I mean, this is like that.... only... ugh, worse."

"Like-- spoiled food and dirty socks," Twilight added.

"Gangrene and stomach gas," Fluttershy, the group veterinarian, chimed in.

"Pig sty and rancid milk," Applejack contributed.

"With a twist of despair and an aperitif of nihilistic self loathing," Rarity added ominously. The others looked at her. "I stood downwind of an art critic once," she explained.

"Well it works to our advantage," Pinkamena said. "Once we've scented him, he's halfway into the narrative." She waggled a hoof. "It's kinda like when you ran underneath that hydra, remember that Twilight? He tripped over himself trying to get to you. As of now, we're too close for him to touch us anymore."

The stairs finally bottomed out at a shabby wooden door. Pinkamena took the lead, resting one hoof on the warped, cracked-and-repainted panels. "Okay, this is it," she said. "Once we're through this door, and we've clapped eyes on him, he loses all his power. But I gotta warn ya--- it's going to be disgusting. It's gonna be hideous. You may, just may want to arf your cookies. Gimme a hoof, Applejack..." Applejack nodded grimly and took up a bucking position right next to the pink pony.

"And so here-- we--- GO!" With a crash of four back hooves and a splintering of wood, the door shattered inward. The ponies leapt through the doorway and landed four hooves square, ready to fight.

As promised, all of them caught their first sight of their enemy, and gagged.

They were in a large rectangular cinder block room, with a concrete floor and a ceiling of floorboards and struts. Grimy throw rugs made a halfhearted attempt to cover the floor, and piles of garbage, old takeout boxes, and rancid clothing were heaped on the broken-down furniture. The smell was excruciating; it was so strong it hung in the air in greenish wisps.

At the far end of the room stood a workdesk, equally crowded with trash and rubbish. On it was a cluster of odd equipment, some of it resembling the equipment Twilight kept in the library basement for her experiments. It was dominated by a large, futuristic looking keyboard and a glowing screen.

And working away at it was an abomination the likes of which none of them had ever seen. It was seated-- or perhaps it is better to say piled--- before the keyboard. None of them could bear to look at it directly; they were all left with an impression of rolls of pimpled, hair studded flesh, heaving and sweating and reeking. The creature made guttural, flatulent noises and pounded at its alien typewriter with simian-like paws, seemingly angry at the strange lights and blooping, razzing noises the machine was making.

"What--- is it?" Twilight Sparkle said, her voice rasping with horror.

Pinkamena sighed and stared with dull contempt at the flaccid monstrosity before them. "it's a trollfic," she said.

"A what?" seemed to sum up the collective response. "A trollfic," Pinkamena said. " Slang term in the biz for "fanfic troll"....They're this horrible side effect of fandoms. Like body odor or bad breath. They mingle with the fans. Most of them even claim to be fans themselves. Maybe some of them even believe it. But deep down, all they're about is finding something that makes other people happy and CRAPPING all over it." Her lip curled.

"Doesn't it need fresh air? How can it breathe with its head up it's own---?" Rainbow Dash started to ask.

"Oh," Pinkamena snarked. "It thinks it farts daisies and rainbows, so it likes the smell just fine."

"So this is like... a Mary Sue?" Twilight asked. She'd practically been weaned on books; she was the most canny of the six as to what was up.

"They're a thousand times worse than Mary Sues. A Mary Sue actually likes the world they ruin. But these greaseballs... if it's innocent, they put filth in it. If it's happy, they make it grim and gritty and morbid and suicidal. If it's harmless, they add blood and gore and puke..." Pinkamena seethed with rage. "And if anyone else complains about it, they think that proves how hip and trendy and superior they are for being so avant garde." The sarcasm in her voice could have cut glass.

The Trollfic chortled malevolently. Or perhaps it farted again. It was hard to tell.

Pinkamena lost it. She ran up and kicked the thing hard as she could. The creature let out a muffled wail. Everyone winced. "Ouch," Rainbow Dash muttered, "Right in the Sergeant Sprinkles...."

Pinkamena began kicking the Trollfic with shocking violence. "They're self-loathing little GITS! Who find a world like Equestria! And they don't STOP! Until everything is as VILE! and HATEFUL! and LOATHSOME! As THEY are! on the IN! SIDE! THEMSELVES!" The bruised Trollfic crawled desperately away, moaning and belching, as she paused to gasp for breath and sweep the hair out of her eyes.

"They don't stop... until nobody can look at the honest farmgirl without seeing her porking her brother...." Applejack twitched. "Or see the dressmaker without seeing a child-abusing town bicycle..." Rarity flinched hard. "And till nobody can see the athlete as anything but a lesbian, because every good fan KNOWS that athletes and tomboys are all BUTCH....or see the PRINCESS without imagining her beheading toddlers or molesting her own sister or growing a WEINER..."

Pinkamena made a breathless half laugh. "And boy o boy, ain't NOBODY ever gonna see the happy little pink party pony again.. without wondering who she's got chopped up in the basement... or wondering when she's gonna go SNAP and kill everyone... or even see her--" she choked back a sob. "Or even see her... smile... without thinking that she can't really be that happy, she's gotta be sick in the head, or on pills... she can't ever smile again..." Pinkamena crumpled to the floor, sobbing.

The others didn't quite understand what was going on. They didn't need to; they crowded in around the distressed pony, ignoring the trollfic lying on the floor (Rarity, being the classy lady she was, casually ground her hoof in someplace painful as she stepped over it) and clung to her in a group hug. After a few moments, Pinkamena managed to stop crying and pulled herself together. "That's where I came from," she said. "I'm Pinkie's--- other side, I suppose. Her mirror reflection.

"Trollfics got ahold of Pinkie Pie... She was so happy, naturally they hated what she was, right to the core. They overdid it. She was already peeking through the Fourth Wall all the time..They made her psycho. then they made her a split personality. Then manic depressive, schizoid, delusional, intermittent explosive, demon possessed ...they made her so many different kinds of crazy that she looped all the way back round to sane again. And since she could peek through the fourth wall she knew what had happened. And so she became us. Her and me. Me in the mirror, her in the canon."

"There are other characters... out there in the Between, characters so banged out of shape by bastardized fanfic writings that they can't even fit into their own worlds anymore. I'm one of them. I'm the bitter, broken thing Pinkie would have been, if she hadn't put all of her sad into the mirror."

Fluttershy embraced her with a wing. "Oh you poor thing..."

Pinkamena actually smiled. "It's not so bad," she said. "Better than being what things like THAT would have made me, anyway." She kicked in the direction of the trollfic. It quivered and tried to hunch further away. "I got a job that keeps me busy. Working with the others, making sure losers like this don't ruin other people's childhoods....plus, I get to see the world through Pinkie Pie: see the rainbows, taste the cupcakes...She makes the parties-- I get to make sure nobody ruins them."

"All her parties, huh?" Rainbow Dash said, grinning. "So isn't saving Equestria a little above your pay grade?"

"To Pinkie Pie, Equestria is one big party," Pinkamena said.

"So is this it? It's over?" Applejack asked.

"Let me guess," Twilight said. "Just one more little denouement before things wrap up, correct?"

"Pretty much," Pinkamena said. "And it should be in about three.... two.... one...."

There was a clatter of hooves from the stairway. Celestia stepped in first, followed by Luna (who seemed rather bleary-eyed and was clutching a water bottle to her aching head). Both of them had a disturbing gleam in their eye. "Well done, my little ponies," Celestia said. "We received word that you'd found the culprit--"

"Pinkie Pie showed up in a mirror," Luna explained. Alicorn metabolisms processed alcohol rapidly; unfortunately this meant that Luna had now gone from total inebriation straight to the hangover. She was consequently speaking in a much, much quieter voice than normal.

"--- and so now Luna and I shall take the "trollfic" into... custody," Celestia finished, her eyes narrowing to slits. The trollfic whimpered and tried to scramble through the back wall.

Twilight could be obtuse at times when it came to the Princess, but this time she could tell which way the wind was blowing. "In that case, your Highness, my friends and I will take our leave, aheh..." She hastily trotted for the door. The rest of the Elements of Harmony followed close behind. Just as they exited, Twilight heard Celestia speaking to the Trollfic,

"Well, it seems I have this lovely huge cannon up in my throne room thanks to you, and it would be such a shame to waste it before it goes poof...

"Tell me. Do you like.... bananas?"

Then commenced the sounds of a savage beating.

As they started up the stairwell, Pinkamena's coat suddenly brightened several shades. Her mane and tail bounced back to their buoyant curly normalcy. "Yay, all done," Pinkie pie said happily. "Oh, right. HEY PRINCESS!" She shouted back down the stairs. "SMASH THE COMPUTER-- YOU KNOW, THE STUFF ON THE DESK! THAT HURTS THEM THE MOST!" There was a loud smash from below, followed by truly agonized wailing from the trollfic. "Yay! And that takes care of that!" she cheerfully hopped her way up the stairs, singing a merry tune.

The others looked at each other, then back to Pinkie Pie. "Pinkie?" Twilight asked tentatively. "Are you and... Pinkamena... all right?"

"Of course, silly filly," Pinkie said. "And don't worry about Pinkamena. She's right here," she tapped herself on the noggin. "and right here too." Her hoof tapped her heart. "Just watching from the other side--- in case something like Mr Nastypants Poopyhead Trollfic tries to happen again."

"Well, ah don't know about you all, but ah plan on sleeping in tomorrow," Applejack said. "Fer once ah think ah earned it. In spades."

There was a chorus of agreement from the others. "what about you, Rainbow Dash?"

Dash hovered overhead, a sleepy grin on her face. "I dunno," she said. "I think I'd rather go finish my appointment with Hans...."

They were on the train headed for Ponyville when the boom of an enormous cannon echoed over the city. Something tiny, flabby and traveling at high velocity arced up over the city and disappeared into the sky. In the distance they heard Celestia, in royal canterlot voice: "To the mooooooooooooon....."